Nuanced. - 68. Ilia Poznak: Mental Toughness, Psychology & Meaning

Episode Date: August 8, 2022

Ilia Poznak is an organizational psychologist, consultant, hiker, Jiu-Jitsu martial artist, photographer and mindset coach.Ilia and Aaron dive into the importance of mental toughness, how psychology can help people learn about themselves, the importance of facing physical adversity, and finding meaning in your life. Ilia also talks about his work helping support people in reaching their full potential, and the reasons he chooses to hike steep mountain ranges. Follow Ilia on Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

My name is Ilya Posnack. I think that's my surname. Yeah, so name, background, what do I do? Yeah, so I'm I'm I'm a leadership coach, and at the moment I'm working in healthcare. I also have kind of a side business that I dabble with on the side doing coaching and things like that, a bit of contract work. And, yeah, in terms of my kind of professional background, so I'm a psychologist by trade. Specifically, I specialize in organizational psychology, human factors and things like that.

And, you know, somehow I found myself in this wonderful country we called Canada about three years ago. So, yeah, how much do you want to know? It's a question. I want to know all of it. So if we could start what brought you to, what's a bit of your family background, I guess. I'm interested in you have lived in Australia a lot of your life, but I'm curious as to sort of what your family background was and how that sort of shaped your worldview.

Yeah, sure. So, I was born in the former USSR, really important distinction to make, the former USSR. So I was born in Georgia, which is, you know, one of the former Soviet states there. just during the fall of the Soviet Union there. You know, so I'm Georgian. My dad is Ukrainian, ethnic Ukrainian.

My mom is Georgian. So really, at that time, it was not a very good place to be. They're both musicians by trade as well. So, you know, the thing about the kind of the pit historical, as it's called, is you can kind of survive in a couple of different ways, right? Like if you had connections or if you were doing that. dodgy dealings and you were kind of, you know, doing things under the table. So my parents weren't that way inclined. So basically, uh, they took the opportunity when I was about five, um, to, so we moved from Georgia and then we, um, during the civil war there

actually, uh, basically they uprooted their lives. They moved to Russia and then that wasn't much better. And so they made the kind of decision to move to Australia. Okay. There's a bit of ignorance here. A civil war? I, yeah. Yeah. So in 89, between 89 and kind of 1990 or so, basically there was a civil war in Georgia. You know, like when I say civil war, I don't mean like, you know, a civil war in America, like something, you know, massive. It was just basically a tussle for power, right? And so you had the old regime versus the new regime, kind of actually I would say very similar to some of the stuff that's going on in Ukraine. So that was, yeah, that was 89, 1990, around that time.

And then the new government obviously took power and then, you know, the rest of history. Okay. So your parents have kind of a few different options to choose from to stay, to consider kind of adapting to the situation and the culture that's taking place there, or to leave and keep, it sounds like, their moral compass. What did you learn from that? And what are your thoughts on kind of their decision to do that? Because it's a tough decision to leave your country, your home. Maybe you have a community.

So what was that sort of like to hear about their decision to do that and kind of learn about their journey? I think about my parents is they're very pragmatic people. So although I think, I think a part of it, of course, was around the, you know, the moral compass piece. I think a large contributing factor to the decision was just, it was impossible almost to get food enough for themselves. You know, they, when I talk to them about that time, they, you know, they tell me about days where they would go hungry just in order to be able to give me food, for example, right? So, you know, I just, part of me thinks that as much as I'd like to attribute some sort

of your greater moral wisdom to the situation, I do think it was something that was born out of practicality, right? If you have a small child, you've got to think of your child, that's their number one focus. And they've always been, I think, very family-oriented. So my own values actually really, I would say, a large chunk of my values, I think, come from my parents. and family is a really strong value of mine. So, yeah, I think that was one of the things that I observed from them was like, you know,

you just do, you do everything that you can, right? And sometimes you need to make the tough cause. And one of the tough causes you've got to leave behind the, you know, the community, your families and all that kind of stuff. Funnily enough, in their case, I don't think that was particularly, I think psychologically that was a hard move to make. make, but I don't think, um, practically it was a bad move to make because, uh, they actually had quite a rough upbringing and, you know, there's a lot of like family trauma and stuff like

that, which we weren't kind of go into. So I think it was actually a really, it was a blessing in disguise for them. Yeah. So they went to Russia and then where did they go? What was the, because you, most of your life was in Australia. So how did you, how did you get there? So after spending some time in Russia, again, I don't think things were much better in Russia than Georgia. So they applied for a skilled migrants visa, both, as I said, being musicians, and at the time, Australia was accepting a bunch of new migrants. So they managed to snag one of these skilled migrants visas, and then they went, well, I think actually the two decisions, as they described, were either Canada, ironically, or Australia, didn't have enough money for Canada, but they did have enough money for Australia. So, you know, they popped over to the land down under with, I think it was like two suitcases and $10,000 in pocket to start a new life with a, you know, with a baby pretty much, a small child. Did that shape you at all?

Do you have many memories from that kind of experience to end up in a new country and a new culture? So from childhood to about six when I came to Australia, I kind of have like a 10-minute YouTube reel in my mind of memory. right there's just things that kind of pop out you know um writing you know the rowboats and um visiting the uh visiting the museums there playing in the snow um you know going to boggling with my dad there's just like certain little snippets in fact actually my earliest memory um is actually from my time in georgia and i remember it was just like i don't know why but it's kind of see it in my memory a little bit but so this is a really visceral memory of shaking, right?

Like the building is kind of shaking, everything's shaking, the dishes are kind of clanging around, et cetera. And I remember going out onto the balcony and looking down at the street and there's just kind of columns of troops and tanks just marching. And obviously the buildings were shaking because of the tanks kind of, you know, and then there's some gunfire and all that kind of stuff in the back. So there's some things, but it starts to get more clear ones where you get on the plane. And I have Coke for the first time.

And, you know, they show me the, so the plain brand, you know, Quantus, do you know, Qantas? No. So that's kind of like the Australian. It's kind of like Air Canada, the Air Canada of Australia. And at the time, you know, they give kids like these little coloring books and things like that with all these kind of animals and characters. And I've always had a strong affinity with animals.

So I think that's that kind of experience of having Coke for the first time. and, you know, people being really nice to you and giving you coloring books and stuff, like it was just such a novelty. So that's probably, that's probably interesting. I also remember being sick a lot in that first year, first two years, actually, of being in Australia. So much so that this, the school,

at my school actually sent, like, people over to check that I wasn't, like my parents weren't kind of keeping me at home on purpose kind of thing or anything like that because my immune system. was just adjusting to this whole new place, whole new bunch of bugs and how it just get sick like a drop of a dime thing. Yeah. So when did psychology become an interest of yours? Was that always something that was in the background of your mind that you enjoy trying to understand where people are coming from and their perspectives and the mentality people have?

When did that sort of start to arise? So there's a funny part of that and then there's a more serious part of that. The more serious part is I think growing up, you know, I watch my parents fired a lot. In fact, the divorce rate for migrants typically is extremely high. Probably higher than the average population, I believe, when I was looking at it. So, because you can imagine all the pressures that that puts on you, you know, financial, cultural, linguistic, all that kind of stuff. Like, it's, it's tough when you uproot your life, move to a new country and you don't have any social support other than the person that's, you know, sitting opposite you. So, it's, you know, so to speak. And one of the things that I always remember is they would fight and then they would

spend a huge amount of time. I would, you know, literally hours sitting down and talking to each other and trying to figure out why. Why did that happen? And the questions that they would ask were, you know, what was it about that situation? Why did that trigger? You know, like that kind of stuff. Obviously, not in those kinds of terms. They are speaking Russian. They're not, or Georgian. they're not speaking English, but that would be my loose translation there. And it was really interesting. Like I just remember that kind of key takeaway of sometimes there's more to a situation than meets the eye.

And they weren't fighting because of what happened. They were actually fighting because of what that brought up from some of the trauma that they had experienced in their lives, right? So that was kind of that my entryway or my pathway into something a little bit deeper than, well, you behave X, and therefore I'm just going to ascribe some personality traits to that and say, well, you're doing that because you're a bad person, let's say. And then they would often ask me as well, like if I would feel sad or glad or mad or whatever, they'd ask me, you know, why? Why are you feeling sad? You've got to ask yourself, why?

And it took me a long time to kind of figure out how do you ask yourself questions, right? But the answers are there, right? Like, you know why. You just got to kind of learn the skills to do that. So that was my introduction into, that's called Armchair Psychology. And then I remember in high school, I watched a movie called Analyze This. Do you remember that movie? No. All right.

I'm dating myself now a little bit. So it's a movie with Billy Crystal and Robert De Niro. And essentially, the theme of the movie is, you know, Robert De Niro is a mafia. He's a mafia boss and he has an anxiety attack and he basically goes to Billy Crystal, who's a psychiatrist and they have some hijinks and things like that. And I don't know why that movie made such an impact on me, but I remember watching it going, huh, people love to tell me stuff. I seem to be really easy to talk to.

And I just really resonated with that character, you know, Vili Crystal and in that role of the psychiatrist. And I went, I could do this. I think I could help people, right? So, I don't know. I just kind of never looked back after that movie. It's weird, right? Because all the things to push you down a vocational path, you wouldn't think a kind of a buddy

comedy would do that, but it just really struck a chord with me. I think it was the first time that I saw all the traits within myself kind of really aligned and reflected back on me from the screen. I went, that's kind of like me. Yeah. That's a trip. The part about asking yourself a question and then the answer sort of arises from somewhere. And I don't know if we do a good job of sort of reflecting on how odd that is that you can

ask yourself a question, but pre-asking yourself a question, you don't know the answer. And so you can answer a question, you can ask yourself a question, and the answer seems to sort of spontaneously appear to yourself, and you go, oh, well, that all makes sense. And, like, I can start to see why I was angry or reactive, because we like the surface-level disagreement, preferably to kind of digging up the roots of the problem and kind of going through it and figuring out what's going on, it's easier to say, you left the dishes in the sink, and that really angers me, and it's just because you're a bad person and you're incompetent and you don't care about the people around you.

Like, it's easier to do that, then go, why does this bother me? Where is this coming from? Where does this angst that people need to approach things the same way I approach things, and that they need to take all of that seriously? because I take it seriously. We kind of like to just put it on the other person. And I think when you start to ask yourself those questions, the initial kind of process is hard

because you have to look at yourself in the mirror and you have to see what am I doing wrong? Why do I want this person to be like me and why am I more angry with them than I ever am with myself? Well, you know, there's, oh my God, there's so much to unpack in there. Firstly, I would say a slight reframe. It's not even a reframe. I actually agree with you.

But, you know, what I would also say on top of that is that I think we do know. You know, it feels like in spontaneous, it's always there. The answer has always been there. It's just below a level of consciousness that maybe, as you said, we're not kind of aware of. So the answer is there. You just need to scratch away the surface. I think the reason why we do that around other people can be probably threefold. Number one, something I see a lot in with my.

coaching clients is there's a lot of a lot of conflict that arises from a clash of values right and uh i think it's jonathan hight's book as well uh jonathan hight talks about these ideas like moral matrices right and people have different values number one but also different kind of ethical and moral frameworks um and so that in of itself brings forth conflict but i think also one of the reasons why let's say you might see someone who uh you know let's use an example of the dishes let's Let's keep it kind of grounded for now. But, you know, maybe your partner doesn't do the dishes. You get angry at that, you know, because you don't do this or you're lazy or all that

kind of stuff and you don't understand why often it's a case of projection as well. Like you're seeing in the other person the traits of yourself that maybe you don't like, right? Some of those traits might be laziness or, you know, you talked about, you know, well, you don't care about me. Maybe that is a trait within yourself which you don't like. like you see you fear or something like that um i have a lot of that around uh it's funny because we're talking about the drinks before and about sugar you know for me uh being kind of involved in physical culture and all that kind of stuff like that's a challenge that i have around um like let's

say body acceptance uh the movement not i don't care what people look like but you know the movement of body acceptance and a part of that is you know when i look at people who are like yeah you know what healthy at every size and i kind of go well no you I don't know whether it is healthy at every size, especially if you'll, you know, I'll say 500 pounds, probably I would say most medical professionals say that's probably at a certain point in your life, it's going to decrease your lifespan. But then if I ask myself, why am I bothered by that? Because I'm really not, but, you know, why does it bother me, though? It would probably be something to do with, like, I am projecting onto that individual, right, to a certain

degree. And I go, I don't want to see myself as lazy. I don't want to see myself as slothful or, you know, indulgent or whatever it is, right? Because I like to put up this mask of me being very strong and firm and like mentally tough and all that kind of stuff. And all of, you know, I'm basically going to take all the unpleasant personality traits within myself that I don't like and I'm going to let that person hold them for me. Right. Right. So, well, that person is, you know, overweight, so therefore they must be all of these things that I don't particularly like about myself. Probably not, right?

So that's... Yeah, the overweight one, I think, is a good example because it's... I was 240 pounds, very out of shape, and it was... And this is where, like, I feel like the anti-bullying movement is more complicated. My close friend Russell used to call me chubby chicken man. He remembers, and I don't remember this. me walking down to work. I worked at Dairy Queen and having like a chubby chicken burger from A&W, if you know A&W, on me.

And then that's where the nickname sort of came from. And so he'd teased me about that. And we weren't very close at the time, but he was then the person. So he called me that all the time. He was then the person who dragged me to the gym and started showing me this is how you get fit. And then he'd put the weights on and he was teaching me how to use that. And I don't think I could have gone down. path of trying to be physically fit, of running, without somebody basically saying that I was

inadequate the way I was and that I was not enough in the way that I was. And the other piece is that I think the challenge that I have with, like, we've talked about Jordan Peterson briefly in the past, he called out someone for being on the front of a magazine for being overweight and being body positive. I don't think that I'd be shocked if somebody, actually believed that they were good the way they were when they feel that way. Because looking back on it, I did lots of things to try and cover up the fact that I knew I was overweight. But it's something I tried to keep on the unconscious level. But there was a hatred of going to the beach, of taking off my shirt, of doing any physical activity, because then people would see

me sweat more than them at basic things of like, oh, you want to go for a walk. Well, my back is going to be drenched in sweat and yours isn't and there's those subtle things that most people don't think of there's that feeling when everybody's done eating a meal where you're still hungry and you want to eat more and then you're like oh no like that's that's a statement of me because my stomach can hold so much more food because it's used to holding so much more food there's a feeling of after you look like you were eating something healthy like maybe you do go to dinner with someone and you have a salad and then you want to go get a burger after um when they're not there and so there's a feeling of like you know they're not doing that but you're doing that

and there's these like small pieces that i don't think like when you're just sitting there and you're sweating and you're in a classroom there's like a feeling of like what is wrong with me like what is going on and i don't think that people who don't go through that realize that it's a lie that they're telling like that person's on the front of a magazine saying that they feel great about themselves but there's so much behind the scenes that people who don't struggle with being overweight, don't experience or get to see. I remember once I tried to wrap tape around my stomach to try and hold in my weight so that people wouldn't see it as like a thinking of like, this will fix it. Because I think in movies they've had like scenes where like they'd wrap

something around their stomach to like look thinner. And so all of those things I looked up when I was like 13 liposuction. Like what would that look like? And so I don't think people get to see the Google searches of people struggling with weight. or the challenges in everyday situations that really do impact them. But the intimidation of running when you, like, I couldn't go on in elliptical until like a couple of years ago because I was so afraid of shaking the machine and everybody seeing it. And that would run through my mind of like, I'd rather run on the trail. But even at that, people you see and you see they're overweight running on a trail, you see their whole body shake. So I don't want to go through that.

So I preferred hiking for a long time because hiking, you're doing it slower, but none of you is shaking. And so there's that, there's like small, I think, pieces that you never get to kind of see behind the curtain of that person to understand the struggle. But I do think that there's a certain level at which bullying or someone kind of calling you out can be a value. And I'm just curious as to your thoughts on that. Like, how do we, like, because there's a certain element of our culture that's good, which we're gentle on people. And we're saying, hey, like, come as you are, but move in a direction of being healthier. But I can't see a way that I get on that path without feeling like, okay, this person knows that he sees my insufficiency just as clearly as I see it. But nobody else in my peer group is willing to say it.

They're not willing to call out the elephant in the room. So that's what made me trust him. And then he was also very fit like you are. And so there was a certain amount of like, well, he knows the path. And so if I follow him, I can move in the right direction. But I don't think I get the will to kind of push myself without kind of. kind of having someone say like you're you look unhealthy you've you look terrible you don't seem like you're well and now looking back on it I think of all the times where I wasn't thinking

clearly where the extra weight distracts you and it's it's like a voice in the back of your head that doesn't allow you to fully focus on anything that you want to do because you don't feel well in your body well so there's probably two things in there number one is I would say as a society we've kind of moved more towards self-esteem as opposed to self-acceptance. And there's a big difference between the two, right? I think that acceptance is where we need to live a little bit more. Like, you can accept yourself as, let's say, what do they call? A large-bodied person.

I think that would be the technical term for it. You can accept yourself as a large-bodied person and see yourself for all the great things that you have. Like, let's take your example when you were 240 pounds. Like, you're kind of, on the inside, underneath the physical presence, there's still the intellect, the, you know, the empathy, the values, the, like personality, right, the drive. All the stuff that makes you a great person, right? All the stuff that makes you want to do this podcast to be a lawyer to work with the communities, improve your community, all of that kinds of still there. And that's really great, right? And then there's parts of you that maybe, you know, that you don't like or aren't as great.

and we all have those parts, right? I think we've kind of gone a little bit too far one way in the society where we're saying, well, no, no, no, it's all good, right? Whatever you are is fantastic. And look, again, you know, I'm not saying to you that you need to change yourself just implicitly, but maybe as well, a slight shift towards away from, I don't know whether it's identity or physical appearance or whatever it is, because underneath it, I think you would have probably had a tougher time at losing weight and getting fit and maintaining it the way that you have

if there wasn't something deeper there that you were able to connect that experience to, that bullying to, that desire to improve to. So, you know, for me, for example, so actually, let's move it to a third party example. I remember in my last client, when I used to work in kind of a more clinical space, he wanted to quit smoking. And, you know, he had tried many times, and each time he would fail and relapse and go back to smoking. And then we were kind of exploring this idea of, you know, we mentioned values. And one of the things that he was experiencing was basically a little bit of anxiety around the fact that he was going to be a grandfather soon. he his son was about to give my hon his his son was about to have a baby

son wasn't about to give birth to a baby um so his son was about to have a kid uh with his wife and he was like okay like i i don't know whether i can you know run around with this with this kid you know because it's the stuff that a grandpa wants to do right lift the kid up you're spinning around like play games hide and seek all that kind of stuff because the smoking was just impacting his lung capacity so much. And actually what we got through, what we got to in a couple of sessions was this idea of like, actually the value of family was more important to him than the smoking. So it was more important to him to be a grandfather and to be around for that child when the child was, you know, older and in high school and all that kind of stuff than his desire to quit smoking.

Now, if I had said to him, well, you need to quit smoking because it's unhealthy, doctors had told him that the whole, you know, all the time. That's the one thing that they said, well, you've got to quit because it's going to do this and it's going to do that. He didn't care, right? Because health isn't that important for that person. Family was important for him. And all of a sudden, you know, give him another four months. And he, he did. He quit smoking and he didn't look back since, right? So I think we all have something within us that we can tie to self-improvement or tie to behavioral change I think

you know I get your example I do think sometimes like the the example that like it will you know you're inadequate somehow physically so therefore you need to improve

I don't think that depends on the personality but I think for a lot of people that would further demotivate yeah I think you need to be a spec like you and I probably cut from the same cloth

I had the same thing you know I was chubby as a as a primary school kid as well kids used to relentlessly make fun of my weight and for whatever reason you know I was able to basically take that mold it and use it to improve myself my sister who's 10 years younger than me completely different type of person like if you know you put that same amount of pressure on her she's probably going to crumble as opposed to you know resist and fight and so it could be a

could be a gender thing could be a personality thing that says it's kind of something in there worth exploring, I think, individually. Right. Do you feel like people need to do that more in their day-to-day with kind of everything they do? Because I think one of the challenges so many people face is that we kind of get lost in how we can go about improving ourselves. And so many people find the job that they think they're going to do for a long time, and then they find a routine, and then the idea of improvement or change. sort of falls to the wayside. And I think it's tough for people to find people that they admire,

that they would want to follow in the footsteps in, and then asking that person to do, like, oh, wow, you're running this distance. How can we do that together? I'd like to learn from you. Like, it seems like that's an intimidating process for so many people. I can't count how many times my partner and I have said, hey, like, if you need anything, we're here to help. We're not just saying it.

we're actually right here if you want to do anything like we're here to support you and then we never hear from that person again and so there's like there's a step that a person needs to take and I'm just curious as to what what you think it takes for someone to be able to come to you and say hey I need help I'm having a struggle like does it take being in hell does it take like something not going right in their life that they're going down a bad path why do we get so comfortable and how do we motivate to kind of make that first initial step of reaching out to get help. So, like, let's normalize it with this idea of like, how, how are we kind of hardwired psychologically, right? I think that human beings are hardwired for stability and safety

primarily. So there's a reason why when I work in the organizational context, so things like change leadership and change management, probably some of the tougher things to do. A large part of that is because, as you said, people get used to a routine or something that, represents stability to them. And then when I take that away as a leader or an organization or a CEO or whatever it is, that sends me on a trip, right? And the trip that it sends me on is actually quite similar to the grief kind of cycle. You know, you go through denial and anger and sadness and then you move to a point of acceptance, right? So there is something to be said around just understanding that inherently we're wired for stability. I think the other part of that

well is we connect our identity to a lot of things. So my identity professionally might be I'm a competent coach or I'm a good psychologist or whatever it is, right? So once you connect your identities or something, it becomes even harder to let that go because it's personal now, right? So part of it is I think maybe what people need to get a little bit more comfortable with is recognizing that, you know, holding things lightly is not a bad thing, whether it's a profession, whether it's a role or relationship or whatever it is. I think we try to hold

on to things so much. We try to control everything. And that comes from, again, think about evolution. Let's say we're 40,000 years ago. We're out in the, you know, the African Savannah, and we hear rustling in the bushes. That could be something dangerous. So firstly, we're not going to go there, right? All of a sudden, starts raining. So what do we do? We go inside the cave. I'm cold. I build a fire. So we're so used to controlling the external environment. We've kind of basically copy and paste of that model internally. Once we've developed language, we start to number one categorize emotions and feelings as either good or bad. If I'm anxious, if I'm angry or whatever it is, these are all the bad things.

I need to push them away. And then what I need to do is maximize all the good things, happiness and contentment and love and all that kind of stuff. In reality, it's not necessarily, are they good are bad that they're just feelings right they exist and we've also copy and pasted that the control mechanisms right so whereby you might say to someone hey i'm here for you um you know you and your partner say well i'm here for you where if you want to get this started like reach out because a hundred percent i'm happy to help and then you never hear back well that is one of those forms of control right so what can you do internally you can distract yourself you can opt out right avoid things. You can use thinking strategies to rationalize away. So you can say, well, yeah, I know

really should reach out to Aaron, but, you know, probably I'm just too busy at this stage in my life. Oh, I'll kind of do that down the track or whatever it is. So you can use strength thinking strategies like that, rationalization and even substance abuse, right? Like think about your own experiences with being overweight. How much of that was, well, I don't like the way I look. This is making me feel a certain way. And therefore, I'm going to use certain strategies, whether it's more food, whether it's thinking about things, whether it's, you know, pushing away things that are uncomfortable for me like running on treadmill and elliptical. And actually, when we kind of explore some of that stuff, what you'll find is sometimes on the other side of the stuff that's

really tough and the stuff that doesn't feel good is actually something that's super rewarding for us. Right. So, yeah. So one of the things that I think is really interesting and something I really hate is this idea that you need to do what makes you happy. There's, of course, an element of life where you don't want it to be all negative, but from studies that I've seen, the idea of meaning has really kind of decreased, and we've replaced that with happiness. And the problem with happiness is that it can be short-term, it can be incredibly selfish, it can be at the detriment of the people around you, it can be at the detriment of yourself.

you can trade a lot of your life in for this idea of happiness. My partner goes through that with her parents have basically chosen, now you're grown up, I can go be happy now. And what makes me happy is moving far away from you, living out in the middle of nowhere and not ever seeing you once a year maybe for a few hours, and then that's it. To me, you've traded something negative in to be happy. And then on the other side, her mother is very interested in, like, material things on trips.

And I don't know if it's unconscious or not, but when we've traveled, she basically tries to replicate our trip. And it's like she's more in competition with her child than it is that she's happy for her child, that she's growing and developing and living this life. And there's this sense of, like, competitiveness. And so I've seen the be happy movement do what makes you happy. and it leaves people, I think, emptier more often than not than full. But the idea that perhaps doing something meaningful can oftentimes result in happiness, I think, is also true. This podcast is a lot of work.

I do my best on it, and it makes me happy when I put something together that I'm proud of. But it's not just whimsical, do whatever I want and not care. it's a lot of hard work and then the final product I'm proud of and then that makes me happy. I'm just interested in your thoughts on this whole movement of do whatever makes you happy and that being the focal point and this idea of meaning sort of the relationship we have with the religion sort of fading away and religion sort of calls on us to do more what makes gives us a meaningful life than perhaps what makes us happy oftentimes. And so without getting into the detail of any one religion, that's sort of the broad

strokes argument. Yeah, and you obviously hear people like Jordan Peterson talking about that, a lot of, it's funny, because I would say that a lot of liberal commentators would say that as a conservative argument, and yet I would disagree because, you know, I think that's just a rational argument. When you look around at what's happening, as you said, be happy, maximize your happiness. Well, you know, I don't necessarily look at it. from the lens of, let's say,

explaining devil's advocate, if I was a conservative commentator, I'd say, oh, the world is geared towards hedonism and like, we're all just going to hell in a hand. That's not how I see the world necessarily,

but what I do see is emptiness, starting from the roles that people move into, to what they do for hobbies, to the relationships they're in, et cetera. And part of it is actually what you described is, I think there's a difference between process, sorry, outcome versus process.

We're so outcome driven and happiness is a target that I'm aspiring to is an outcome. Things are going to make me happy. So it's the car, it's the house, it's the trip, it's the stuff that's going to make me happy. Okay, well, why is it when I had, you know, I've got the promotion now and I'm the youngest partner in six months. Why did that only last two seconds? I don't know. I don't know about you, but any time I've achieved a really important goal for myself, sure, that's felt really good for all of like, I don't know, 20 minutes, 30 minutes,

and every now and then I'll look back on it and go, wow, I can't believe I did that or I climbed this peak or I did, you know, got that job or whatever it is. But typically it's a fleeting feeling. And if you're not careful, if you're not conscious about how you live your life, what you end up doing is spending your entire life chasing that feeling, without necessarily understanding that happiness is not an outcome that we should be striving. for. I think happiness is an outcome that can happen every now and then. But because it's so transient, it's a bit of a trap, right, that we fall into. Actually, I think meaning, you hit an hour on the head.

So a life of meaning, a life that is value-centric, let's say, would probably be more realistic. And it would actually also open you up to more choice. So what I mean by that is if you're constantly striving towards happiness, you're kind of, imagine like a horse with blinkers, right? All you see is this thing that's in front of you. What you're actually missing if you take the blinkers off and stop kind of using happiness as the blinkers is all the stuff that's around you, right? That, you know, all of a sudden you go, oh, hold on.

This, you know, this path down there to the left actually looks much better. I don't mind if I do, or kind of thing, right? Or, oh, my God, I missed my family. They're standing directly to the right of me. That's important to me. I want to, you know, spend more time with them or whatever it is, right? So I think that the constant quest

for happiness can be a trap. It can be something that limits our effectiveness in terms of the breadth of action that we can take. Not something we should aspire to necessarily. Do you think that that's a product that's harder to sell, though, at perhaps scale when you're talking to a society? There's something about just a simple, do what makes you happy that you can put on a postcard,

and people go, yeah, that all makes sense. But saying, don't do what makes you happy necessarily. Don't focus on that. Do what's meaningful. there's almost something like what is meaningful, where is meaning to be found and how do I move towards that? Because there's something we've forgotten personally from my perspective when we're talking about women in the workforce. Of course, women should be able to do whatever they want. I'd never stand in the way of anyone doing what they find as their passion and what

they enjoy. But it's almost like we've put family as like a second tier in that conversation. And that makes me uncomfortable because there's this idea that you should find like meaning in your job and I think that that's not a bad thing but meaning is most likely to be found in your family from my perspective typically there's going to be exceptions but it feels like for most people their family is often coming second tier to their career and that seems strange to me when you think of how much parents put into loving their child, they're up at four in the morning, loving their child, trying to put them back to sleep, giving them the things they need, and all of these sacrifices in one moment is all made good by like the smile of the child.

And that there's some sort of that was worth all of that sacrifice. And so you could say, who wants to be up in the middle of the night, taking care of a kid for two years. You're never getting any consistent sleep. You're not eating right. You're not getting a regular routine of exercise, but all for this little person and that it's all worth it for this one person. And so that's like, to me, one of the ultimate examples of meaning because you're giving up so much for like these small moments. And I'm just interested in the product of meaning over happiness because so many people, it's hard to sell meaning as opposed to happiness. So you hit the nail on the head with one thing, or at least, at least I want to kind of draw out something.

You know, you mentioned, well, to me, you said to me, family is kind of would be greater than work, right? And then we need to also recognize for other people, it's maybe not necessarily like that. So actually, maybe what I'm hearing in what you just said is not necessarily a whole scale kind of denouncement of work culture, but just like this idea of like, why do we need to be? so polarizing our thinking. Why does it need to be it either it's this or that, right? It's like we went from family, family, family, and that's all that's important to. Like now it's like rise and grind, you know, culture, like let's go, happiness, etc. Potentially, there's a spectrum in there to explore for every person. For some people, they don't want kids. And you know what?

Honestly, that's, that's fine, right? That's going to be a choice that you make. For some people, you do want to have kids. You want to have a family and that's going to bring you a sense of joy and purpose and meaning and all that kind of stuff. But it's being told maybe that this is what you should be doing as opposed to kind of being free to explore the full spectrum. Maybe is what I'm kind of hearing is challenging. I would say that the only thing I would follow up on is that I think there's a real, there's a greater danger in choosing your career over the path of family.

And that might be a conservative argument, but the idea that there is something warm about a Thanksgiving dinner or a Christmas dinner, you're never going to experience that warmth, that comfort, that safety, when I think the gift-giving culture is really gone to shit, but I think the idea that I get to know you, I understand, that you really enjoy maybe going for hikes, which I hope we can dive into. But there's these maybe specific type of shoes or specific type of hiking gear and you don't know I know that and and I'm able to get that for you and then you go I had no like I've looked these up. They were on my mind. How did you know that moment? You're never going to find at the same scale in your job in your career. You're going to have pay bumps. Your boss might say, hey, you're killing it. You're making so much money or you're really opening the doors for this new wave of helping the community. That's all great. But it's never going to be. someone knowing you better than you know yourself. It's never going to be able to be at that scale of warmth of safety of care. And so the default, I would argue, should probably be family for most people. Not every person, some people, they're just like Elon Musk. I don't see him ever kind of saying, you know what, I'm going to settle down. And to your point, we almost don't want him to because he's doing things in our society that takes his full mind, his full passion, his full dedication. He can't veer away from that. But when we start to make him more

of the rule or say that that is the path, then so many people end up being more empty. And so I think we don't exactly explain to people what a healthy family dinner looks like and what they should aspire to in that moment and how they can take steps towards that. Yeah, okay, that's interesting. One of the things that, one of the things that I think is probably noteworthy around that is like, again, I'm all for like normalizing things. For me, that's really important. And, yeah, look, there is something to be said from the perspective of, let's say,

evolutionary psychology or the, look, like, let's not mince words. job one for human beings, just like any other living creature on this planet, is probably to replicate, right? So we've kind of found ways around that a little bit in that, you know, we have this evolved mind and we've kind of gone, well, you know, just having kids is probably a little bit beneath us now. Like, what about all this other stuff that we could be spending our time doing, so to speak, right? So, but let's not move away from that fact that, like, okay, fundamentally, we are probably hardwired to have kids and obviously continue the species. So yes, it would be bad if everybody stopped having kids.

And I believe actually the population in the world is kind of slowing down, right? I'm not actually having more babies. And so, you know, that's a problem for someone much more smart than I am to solve. And there was a point that I was going to tack on the end of that. Well, I think it's the irony that struck me around the fact that we spend so much of our time. We spend 40, let's say 40 hours minimum at work. And you said, nobody at work will ever know you. They're set to the same degree that, like, let's say, a family member or a close friend or something.

Which is so, so interesting, isn't it? Because we spend so much more time with them than we do with our families or with the people that we actually love. And yet those relationships are so transactional, so just almost sterile to us. certain degree, right? Every now and then you're going to have a leader that takes an interest and you're going to have a manager that actually cares about you, right? And you're going to have to build a really great relationship with. And that's awesome. But that's kind of really is my interest though. Like I, I think one of the reasons that I went into organizational psychology is because we do spend so much of our waking lives at work. I want to understand how do I improve people's lives when they're in this space, right? Um, because to me, family is a little bit, again, I think that's coming from my own biases and my own experiences, uh, with, with my family. And my parents are great, but obviously extended family after that. Like I haven't spoken to my cousins for probably three decades, right. Um, yeah, my mom hasn't spoken to her sister for ages, et cetera. Like, these are just not necessarily, even though it's,

it's blood. These aren't people that you necessarily want to be part of your family, right? So I, I think, again, it's probably, I think the thing that gets me is maybe the black and white argument of like, well, it's either this or either that, because I do think that family can be much like community, it can be a double-edged sort. It can be good. But as you said, if we don't know how to

be well together, that could actually probably more traumatizing, probably more problematic for folks. And you know, and you run into the same challenges potentially with family. If we swing the pendulum to the other side

And you go, okay, well, now we've restored society back to this, you know, good old traditional family values. And that's what's really important. And now people are going to do the same thing. They're basically going to look at these standards, these artificial standards that we've set around what a good family is and go, well, I can't believe that we don't aspire to that. And it's going to still cause more suffering. So I think maybe this sounds so pessimistic, but I think maybe at the end of it is like this idea of like, you can't escape that feeling of stuff. Like, life is suffering. Life is pain.

So I would say life is pain. Suffering is optional. That's probably what I would say. But, you don't know where I was going with that point, but it just, I ran away, didn't I? So do you feel like one of the challenges is that we have the idea that family is blood? Because I don't like that analysis. Personally, like, I just, I've never believed to that. as like my my grandmother attended Indian residential school and then as a

consequence my mother was a part of the 60 scoop so she was she had both her eardrums blown out she was born with a disability taken to Coqualee to Indian Hospital it was there a nurse saw her and said this child needs a lot of care I don't think she's gonna get it if we return her to her community so I'm gonna take her in and foster her and love her and give her all the medical treatments she needs and take her to all those appointments so my mother and I didn't grow up with our biological family. Now, I love them and I think I can support them today, but we grew up in a family that wasn't blood, and they loved us unconditionally. And so I've never had a mentality

of, like, blood is family. And so it is something that many traditional approaches, say, like, go have family dinner with your blood relatives, and that's family dinner. But the people who have shown me the most kindness, the most really knowing me. I just had a repeat guest on and he brought me a piece of equipment that I would have never bought for myself, didn't even know existed. And he was like, hey, I think this is going to help you with these videos that you're making over here. And so I had it. It wasn't working for me, but I think it'll work for you because you have an iPhone and I have an Android. And both times, the first time he came on, he made me a piece of leather and he loves the leather work. So he made me a business card holder and was like, you're going to be a lawyer

one day. So I think having a business card holder made out a leather, I made this myself, here you go. So that gift was better than most of the gifts I've received from blood family over the span of my life because part of it is transactional. Part of it is you're going to get me something for $100 and I'm going to get you something for $100 and then there's an argument, why bother? Why don't we just both keep our $100? And I think that that's, again, moving away from the idea of true gift giving, which is to give the person something maybe they didn't know they need or showing that, hey, like, something you've indicated to me is that, like, your health is important to you. So how could I get you maybe a gift card to somewhere where

that that is supported or a place that you would want to go to to be able to pick up healthy supplements or something like that? That starts to be my kind of level of analysis rather than just, oh, I'll get you another shirt. And here I got you this shirt from the gap. That's a very thoughtless gift because it says nothing about how I know you to be. And so I'm just curious as to how do you think we best navigate and what made you interested in organizational psychology? At what stage were you in like your undergrad and saying this interests me? Because you're right, we're spending more time at work and those relationships are transactional. It seems like you're trying to bring the human back into that sort of relationship.

yeah that's a good way of putting it um i think also to your point around uh around gift giving and and thoughtful gift giving probably requires us to be less self-interested self-focused right we're so tied up with the stuff that we have going on so for me to actually be able to know that you're into health or you're into this or whatever it is and give you a gift that is meaningful in that regard probably involves some level of looking up right right, pulling myself out of the weeds and looking around me, some connection to other people, which, again, probably something that has started to dip and wane in recent years.

So to answer your question around the organizational psychology, so I kind of came to a bit of a crossroads during my honors. So we had a bunch of these kind of speakers who came, and some of them were from the clinical programs, some of them were from the organizational programs. And there was just something about that idea of like, okay, if I could work with one person, great. If I can improve your life, that's fantastic. Because I think a lot of people get in psychology for altruistic reasons.

They know that they can help or they would like to help people in some way, acquire skills, maybe mental skills that they don't have, navigate through life in some way. And then there was this other piece around the organizational psychological psychology and I went, well, if I could, if I could help one, one person on a clinical setting. And what if I moved into an organizational setting? What if I worked within a company of a thousand people? What if I worked within a company of, let's say, 23,000 people, right, give a take. What if I could make an institute some changes in that regard? What would that look like?

How might that actually improve a larger, you know, amount of people's lives? So I think, really, it was a bit of a numbers game for me. Like, if I want to help the largest possible. amount of people and it theoretically that is why I got into this into this game to begin with that I think like again from a rational perspective organizational psychologist just kind of appealed to me a little bit more the reality of course is that it's probably mixed in both regards right so in clinical psychology you you may help people one-on-one and then you also work with people who don't necessarily want to be helped who was only there because of requirements

from caseworkers or all that kind of stuff or, you know, whatever their own workers' comp or anything like that. And you're going to have those same people who might, who might actually desire some change. So on the one hand, you've got that kind of mixed bag. And in the organizational psychology realm, you also have difficult CEOs, difficult leaders. You have people who aren't ready to change. You have, you know, the political kind of game of thrones stuff that happens within organizations and all that kind of stuff. So, I don't know. Sometimes it does feel a little bit like you're just kind of casting sand onto the beach a little bit.

You're like, well, this is just part of the whole thing. But I think that's probably a, that feeling is probably constructive because I think it keeps us coming back to try to do more. Or it could disenchant us entirely. Could go on two ways. So early on, you talked about how you enjoy listening to people. And that that was something that people commented on, that you were very aware, that you were willing to pay attention and give them the space to speak. So many people struggle with that. So many people, if you say, I had a bad day, I just, a customer is really rude to me.

Someone will one up them and go, oh, you think you had a bad day. Well, I just got into a car accident and they'll compete on that level. Or they'll be like, oh, you think you had a bad day, but you've got this beautiful house. so shouldn't you be grateful, rather than just sort of getting out of the way, letting the person talk, really listening to them and saying, okay, what I hear you saying is this. How can we maybe work together, but even moving too quickly to solutions can be a challenge sometimes

because sometimes people just want to vent and have the space to say, I had a bad day, there's nothing that can be done, or my boss was having an off day, and it's usually he's 90% of the time, he's great, but this time he's, was a real piece of work, and so I just want to be able to vent to that. I don't need ten-step solution to it. I just want to be able to talk. What was that early process like to be able to listen to people and really engage them and hear their stories and be patient and sort of go through that? Did you enjoy that? Did that inspire you? Do you enjoy hearing

people's stories? What was that sort of early stage like and then going into a career? Yeah, I mean, believe it or not, I actually think that's probably one of the biggest barriers to either counseling or coaching or psychology or anything like that and in general um is a feeling maybe that the provider that is sitting opposite you doesn't really care like i'm a stranger to most of these people like i don't know them so why the hell would i care about you know about their their challenges or their issues and you know it's a it is a weird phenomenon because that on the one hand, when that person leaves, right, I will not be taking that with me. You know, I'm not going to be going home and thinking about how dreadful that is.

And I think the part of that is probably just a good professional level of compartmentalization. So that's probably a key skill to have. But when that person is there, I am 100% invested and engaged. And, you know, I care with my entire heart and my entire being what it is that they're talking to me. about. So I've always really, really enjoyed, said stories. I've always really enjoyed hearing people's stories. It's not even necessarily the helping for me, right? Like, I just enjoy understanding what people are going through, number one, hearing about that. And then, look, if we get to a point of solution, which is, theoretically speaking, where we should be heading

towards, that's fantastic. But a large part of, you think about clinical outcomes, although I don't do any clinical work. I just basically do coaching now. Whether it's clinical outcomes or coaching outcomes, seems to me that the research is kind of quite geared towards the idea of outcomes being predicted by the relationship that you have with your therapist or your coach or your counselor or whatever. So if you have a really good relationship with that person, oftentimes it doesn't really matter what sort of evidence-based therapy that they're bringing.

that in of itself can predict a large chunk of the improvement that you'll expect to have. So you're right, like people don't necessarily know, because we're not trained, right? Think about school. What do they teach us? Algebra, they teach us about history or part of history, Canadian history, the white Canadian history, or the white Australian history. They teach us about, you know, geometry, geography, maybe question mark, even then, right? all that that that's the stuff english math they don't necessarily teach us how to communicate with each other how to self-reflect how to be aware of what's going on inside how to um solve

conflict with each other and specifically as you said how to how to actually sit and be with someone and listen to them and just kind of go okay i'm going to suspend that problem solving part of my brain and i'm just going to ask you like what is it that you need this is a hard lesson that I've learned even with my partner. What is it that you need from me? And she'll say, you know what? Right now I just need you to listen. Perfect.

You know what? I just switch off the little switch in the back of my mind that goes straight to solution mode. And I can just be there for that person. They don't expect anything, you know, groundbreaking of you. They just want you to empathize and acknowledge that what they're going through is valid and real. Yeah.

Right. So what has your experience been being able to develop maybe tools? around communication with people because one of my favorite parts of an interview is when the person says something like, that's a really good question. And there's something genuine about the pause afterwards. Of course, sometimes people go, oh, that's a good question, blah, blah, blah, blah. But when they pause and they go, I hadn't had the opportunity to really think about that previously. It's something I don't know if we're always aware of, which is say you have a divorce, like your family member has a divorce and you're watching them go through it. And you kind of go, I wonder how this is

impacting their sleep. And you say, how is this impacting your sleep? And then they go, wow, I've been up at four in the morning every night and I didn't put the two together. There's something else about the three-hour format that's allowed some guests afterwards to go, wow, I didn't realize that what took place when I was 15 years old actually relates to why I took this job or why I chose this path and it's so it's so humbling because I had an opportunity to play a role because so rarely do people get to talk about their life in long form and sort of go in chronological order through their life's journey and how what happened to them shaped their life and how who they are as a person because so many of our conversations are hey let's go grab a quick cup of coffee at

tim hortons it'll be like 30 minutes and we'll just touch base and then we'll both be on our way And so there's so much, there's so little of the human being that gets to come through in those short meetings or you, hey, let's just go for a quick walk. And then you're walking and you're talking about the current events and you don't get to dive into anything meaningful. And so I like the three-hour format because there's opportunities to ask more insightful questions to think about the person as a whole and then to think about their life as more of a whole rather than just one piece. And it was the hesitation with doing 30-minute interviews or an hour because, I don't think people are willing to show emotions or get emotional if it's quick and if it's rushed and if it's, I've got these ten questions and I'll just ask the ten questions and then you can get out of here. There's something about not having a fixed point in time that's allowed me to go three and a half hours, go an hour and a half and depends on the person. And so what has that been like for you to develop communication skills and start to understand how to approach a person over time? So let's just also kind of establish that it's a little bit different, whether it's coaching or counseling, something like that.

It's different in the fact that, like, I am a little bit more time bound. Typically, it's 45 minutes, it's an hour, right? That's what I have with that person. And I would agree there is some magic to be found in free association and, you know, directing people just through a chronological kind of series of events. But really, if you would translate that into a kind of a coaching context or something like that it'll be something like a case history or taking a history. You kind of have to force yourself into these little artificial kind of constructs, right?

But I think what I've found in my career is I've never had, well, let me rephrase that, the feedback that I've received by and large from the people that I've worked with has always been focused on empathy and has always been focused on how easy it is to talk to me. And I'm not saying that to pump up my tires or, you know, I'm the best person in the world. But there's just something about the way that I seem to present when I'm sitting down with someone. And it could be a mix of, I think part of it is body language, part of its eye contact, part of it is tone. And part of it is taking a genuine interest that seems to get people comfortable. And I don't, I don't know whether you, I don't necessarily spend a huge amount of time thinking about, like, what's in the special source?

Like, how do I replicate that in, in other people, right? I think maybe if I was to think about it, what it probably is is around self-disclosure. There's something there, right, where you kind of go, I'm not like, I'm not a doctor, right? So, or a lawyer, or whatever it is, where you have these, like, specialist professions and, and the point of this is for me to give you specialist advice, and I am a subject matter expert, and you're, you know, a lowly peasant, I think. For me, when I'm coaching someone, actually, the metaphor that I use is more, surprise, surprise, given mountains, it's the two mountains metaphor, right?

So I like to think of it as, like, look, I'm, and I actually disclose this metaphor sometimes to my clients as well, I go, look, look, I'm over here, I'm climbing my mountain, you know, and I see you over from across the valley and you're climbing your mountain. So from where I am, from my vantage point, what I can see on your side is, well, okay, you know, if you're going straight up, you're going to hit some cliffs, you can hit some ledgers, there's some avalanche debris, whatever it is. It might be better to via right. If you go left, there could be a grizzly, whatever it is, you know, I can see that through the power perspective. But it's not because I've climbed your mountain. I just have a

different vantage point. And in this very similar way, you could do the same for me. If you had the same set of skills, if we were having this conversation in different context, frankly, you could do the same thing for me. You could look over my mount and go, actually, I think you should be hanging your left or hanging your right, you know, kind of coming up. So I don't pretend or position myself to be some sort of expert in whatever it is that they're going through. It's just the whole point that you're here is because sometimes we're too close to our own mountains. We're like, yeah, we're basically stuck on the face and all we can see is the rock right in front of our eyes. So sometimes we all need that, you know, that different

person. So I think there's something a little bit powerful in, firstly, not positioning yourself as someone who's better than the person that you're talking to that, number one, kind of, I think, disarms people. And number two, as well, there is a certain amount of professional self-disclosure. Like, you know, you can talk about the things that you've struggled with or whatever, right? And you have to do that strategically because obviously it's their time. It's not an opportunity for you to vent, but I think that what that also does is it takes people, again, off guard a little bit where they go, okay, I didn't, I didn't expect this person to be real, right? But this is actually a real person and we've gone right to trust. Because typically, as you said, what do people do if they're

in a 50 minute, 45 minute interview is there's a wall that you need to get through around trust and emotion and all that kind of stuff and I like to just drop that right from the front and go, you know what, like this is who I am. I'm going to give you my 100% honest self. I don't need to hide myself from you because this is a safe space and vice versa. One of the problems I think so many people face when the first willing to get help, whether it's counseling, whether it's just trying to self-improve is that the community they have around them is very comfortable with who they were. And again, it seems like we stagnate,

and then the people around us want us to stay stagnated. And check the boxes that we've always checked, do things the way they've always done things, and change is sort of inconvenient when a person is going, hey, you're not treating me very well, and I don't know if you're who I see in the future in my life, because I don't think I deserve this. I'm starting to realize that I deserve better in my life,

and then the people around them go, wow, I like you better when you were this way. And that feels like people are trying to pull you back down into where you were. Is that a challenge to have someone who's kind of developing, we're starting to realize that they want to take their life in a different direction, and then they go, well, everybody around me sort of hates that I'm doing this. They want me to be who I was. They want me to check those boxes. And how do you go about addressing that?

so even when you think about that through an organizational lens one of the biggest challenges or hurdles that you have to let's say doing training you can go to london business school and do this like fantastic masters of leadership whatever if you come back to your organization and there is no psychological safety the culture is rubbish and basically it's just a giant cesspit of toxicity all of those fantastic newfangled ideas about you know being situationally aware and a great leader and pivoting and all that all that's going to go right at the window, and you're going to basically revert back to those old-fashioned behaviors. You need some form of support and some form of accountability. I also look at it through the lens of like things like addiction, right? So, of course, behavioral change, again, on a spectrum. But let's say it was something really, you know, non-serious, let's call it, right? It's just like, I'm trying to be a better person.

I'm trying to grow. That's the thing that I'm trying to do. it is kind of like addiction to a certain degree whereby number one you have this group of people who are used to being who you are and they can pull you down to that space but number two also it's a habit right these are these habits that you're trying to trying to change so that's one of the things that we might talk about in our in our coaching sessions we might talk about like alliances that you need to build we might talk about networks you need to build like how do you, not just fix, quote unquote, fix yourself or fix this behavior or change that part

about you, but how do you make sure that you have all of the other structural elements in place to be able to make sure that that's successful? I do think that number one, of course, as you said, the people around you is something that's worth exploring, but then there's also some more pieces. I really like the biopsychosocial model, which is basically the idea that, you know, in psychology, a lot of these kind of issues, a lot of issues people have have three components, and they've added a spiritual, so biocycle, social, spiritual. So there's a biological element, there's a psychological element, a social element, and a spiritual element. And really, if you're not addressing all four of those elements of the diamond or the pyramid, depending on which one you like, you're really not, you're doing the service to the person, right?

So there's going to be, let's say, a biological element, for example, if you don't get enough sleep, right? If you don't eat well, that's going to impact the clarity that you bring into your day-to-day decision-making. Like, if you're chronically sleep deprived, I mean, you're going to ask my partner about this. Like, sometimes I'll go to, I went to Mount, I submitted Mount Hood this year, and I left Vancouver at 4 p.m. I got to the trailhead at like, you know, 3 a.m. or something. We hiked for like eight hours and then I drove back and I got back at like 8.30 p.m. No sleep. We, you know, did a single push, rotated drivers, all that kind of stuff. The next day, probably for the next two days, actually, my hormones were just like up and down.

Like I would be stable, stable, stable. Something would happen. It would just set me off whether it was anger, but then like deep sadness as well. Like, I was just kind of be, I was on some sort of roller coaster. And that was a large part just from a, frankly, a lack of sleep, right? And a lack of nutrition and all that kind of stuff. So that's what I mean by, like, let's say biological, because there's some biological elements. The social element is what you discussed, right? The psychological element is maybe what we'll deal with with coaching.

How do I give you tips, tricks, tools to make sure you shore yourself up against that kind of resistance? Because if you, look, sometimes you don't have totally totally. too much on this question. So you, I need to give a, no, you, this is, this is exactly what I want it. Um, so if you encounter that level of resistance, sometimes some folks don't have the benefit of going, well, you know what, I'm going to cut my parents out of my life or I'm going to cut this, this, this person out of my life. Maybe one day, maybe you're not ready. Maybe that's never going to happen or something in between. So, okay, if we know that, we need to build in some contingency plans. And so some of those contingency plans actually might be

psychological. And psychological might be, how do I communicate with this person better? How do I try to make them an ally? Okay, great. Well, what is it about this change, like, that's threatening to you? And you might say to me, well, it was just, it was a lot easier before because I could just do that and then, you know, like you, now you're behaving in a completely different way. I don't even know who you are, et cetera, right? It's like, well, you know, would you like to have a conversation about that. So how do we bring those people on the journey as well? Because they're probably also experiencing some change. Of course, the judgmental part of my brain immediately goes to, well, those people are just bloodsuckers and we need to cut them out of our lives. And I think

you asked about my family. So that's actually the downside. There's a downside and a plus side of kind of coming from the former Soviet bloc is like on the one hand, I have this like really this kind of like really black and white conservative. It's not a conservative voice, but it's like it is like kind of like this is, you know, like judgment, judgment, judgment voice in my brain that's like, this is how it is. That's on, on the one hand, I have this really like beautiful, open minded, empathetic voice. So in that same scenario, my brain went from these people should be cut out of your life to, well, I wonder whether we can also bring them on the journey and everything in between, right? which is probably a dichotomy, we should be exploring more, right? Because it's never one or the other.

You just mentioned spiritual. We right now think of ourselves as kind of human meat bags and that we're just that. I'm just curious, did you start from one position in regards to the spiritual and move it all? Do you have a philosophy around that we have? It feels like we're trying to take maybe the best part. of religion and pull them out from it when we talk about like meditation when we talk about yoga these are ideas that have like spiritual undertones religious undertones but we're taking it and we're kind of saying hey you can do it at the local pool you can do yoga but we're

going to take out maybe the hypothetical candles we're going to take away the the opening prayer or what we're going to take apart the parts that were specifically religious and just do the hypothetical beneficial parts. Do you have, what are your thoughts on that spiritual element? How is that separate? Because you could argue that the psychological and the spiritual are the same thing. And I'm sure many people have argued that over the years. Certain people like Jordan Peterson say that they're separate and they need to be acknowledged separately. Elder Eddie Gardner talked about how they're separate

But so many people go If I can understand your mind Then I understand you And there's something again to that Like you ask yourself a question And you don't always know the answer And we are hurtling on a rock in space Just through time

And so there's a certain part of us That knows that there might be something more I'm just interested in your thoughts On how that spiritual element fits in Goes back to meaning Doesn't it right? You talked about meaning. I think a lot of the time we try to define the world in terms of rational terms.

And I'm not particularly religious or spiritual myself or anything like that. But, you know, I'm open to the possibility of it's the most annoying answer. And some people go, oh, I'm not religious, but I'm open to the possibility of something greater than me. I think it's, it comes from a, maybe my position kind of comes from an acknowledgement of of it's, I think it would be foolish to say that we know everything that there is, you know, and that we know everything about the nature of the afterlife or the spiritual realm or whatever it is, right?

Am I saying that crystals are the solution or that, you know, burning some sage or incense was going to do something? I don't know. Probably not, but maybe, but I don't know kind of thing, right? Like, who am I to say that that does or doesn't do something? An example is, you know, in Australia, we have certain indigenous communities in which it's actually not uncommon for them to talk to people past, right? Family members, et cetera, like long past. And I would kind of go, okay, like, in a purely medicalized context, you would probably say, oh, that's probably schizophrenia, right?

And yet, I don't think it is. I don't think it is schizophrenia. So that's the Western word for it. But, you know, that's not how it actually materializes, et cetera, right? So I think there's a place for it. I think we're too quick to shut it down because we like to make everything in a rational space. I think there is probably some benefit to drawing out bits and pieces of meditation or yoga. A yoga is one of those weird ones, though, because to me, I think if you're

you're going to do yoga, if you want to, like, if you're going to do yoga, again, let's be real about the reason why you're doing it. If you want to do it for health purposes, to get more flexible, more limber, you know, there are some, obviously, some health improvements that you'll see, then just say you're going to exercise, right? You're doing yoga for exercise. If I was to do yoga, I would actually want to do yoga, and that involves a whole spiritual, a philosophical element, et cetera. It's like a real yoga. Parts of mindfulness, for example, I do a lot of mindfulness in my in my coaching practice, with my clients, I talk a lot about mindfulness and I don't necessarily see it as meditation, although I recognize the benefits of meditation, right? So for me, I think

to answer your question, I have a lot of personal influence from, for me, I've always really like the Eastern approaches, right? Buddhism, et cetera. Probably a large part of that was from the fact that, you know, when I was kind of younger, I used to realize, like, Japanese culture and Chinese culture. You grew up watching, like, Jackie Chan movies and all that kind of stuff. So it was always something about, like, Eastern philosophy or Eastern approach that appealed to me. And even in my psychological practice, like, I'm less focused on CBT, for example,

and more focused on acceptance and commitment therapy, because that's a third way of Eastern therapy. Could you say what CBT is for people who might not know? Of course, yeah. So CBT stands for cognitive behavioral therapy. It's probably one of the most, well, I would say, probably has one of the largest evidence bases. So in terms of like evidence-based therapies, that's kind of the go-to.

So if you were going to go see a psychologist, you'd probably be guaranteed that that would be one of the things that would be in their toolkit. And that involves things like, you know, Socratic questioning and asking yourself questions in certain formats, understanding what your core beliefs are. Are those core beliefs warped or are they realistic and all that kind of stuff? So it's really just a rebalancing, right, type of therapy.

So that's one of the core ones. Another kind of approach is acceptance and commitment therapy or act. And really that's kind of based on the premise of we need to understand the things that are beyond our control, because there are plenty of things beyond control, and generate an ability to be able to accept those. Now, acceptance doesn't necessarily mean I need to like it, right? I'm not happy about the fact that, you know, I had a loss of a pet or, you know, whatever it is, but that's happened. And my resistance against it is actually only causing

suffering. So there is a whole bunch of strategies that we can use and mindfulness, et cetera, to basically take all of that stuff that's happening, kind of put it in our lap, and free up our hands and for other stuff that we can be doing at the same time. And that allows us to take action, which is part of the word act, obviously, take action in a meaningful direction. So that's really taken a lot of stuff from I would say Eastern philosophy meditation, mindfulness, etc. Suffering has some good perspectives

on that. So yeah I don't know about that answered your question to be honest. So a follow up though is we get into, we have this term placebo effect. Yeah. And psychologists talk about a lot we think about it a lot.

What is the placebo effect? Because we want to categorize it as like our mind coping with something but it seems to have real benefits when we talk about burning sage there's some sort of psychological benefit that isn't as a consequence of the direct burning of it it's something mentally that we're benefiting from beyond what we can explain and we kind of go oh well 30% of it is like the placebo effect but it's sort of like a misnomer because it's like we have no idea where that's coming from why it helps so much why it gives us better tools and it seems like

one of those areas where it almost walks along that spiritual line from my perspective because it's so hard to explain you give someone like a sugar pill and all of a sudden they're starting to feel better and then we go what's the placebo effect and it's like but what is it what is in their mind what is in their body what is in their soul that is allowing them to improve in their health and so I'm curious as to what your perspective is on the placebo effect I think if you knew the answer to that question I think you and I could probably make a pretty penny because I don't think that I don't think psychologists have really got to the root of that. It's just a phenomenon, right? That's a, we know we've observed it. As you said, it's kind of this

idea that, you know, at times the mind will act in powerful ways that probably are beyond comprehension around certain things. Like if you believe that, I don't know, you get the example of the sugar pill, right? If I'm feeling nauseous, I've got a headache and I come to you and I say, so you come to me and you say, well, you know what, I have this pill and it's called, uh, I don't know. I don't know what it's called. It's called Panadol. So I've got this pill. And if you take it, I am going to guarantee you this. We have, you know, peer review data, randomized control trials that this will make your headache go away. If you're kind of convincing enough and if I believe that enough, I take the pill, there's probably a pretty good chance that

my headache will go away, regardless of the fact that that pill was just sugar, right? Don't know whether we know where it comes from, how it relates to, you know, the stuff that we experience. But I think what it does tell me is there's probably a part of our minds that, I don't want, like, it's not like limitless. Let's not get, you know, too science fictional here where, you know, maybe a lot of people say, well, we only use 10% of our brain, all that kind of stuff. That's not necessarily accurate.

But what I do think is that our minds are probably a lot more powerful than we realize. And our minds probably also place limiters, by the way, on us. A good example of that is around the pursuit of strength and physical culture. So you will have plenty of people in the gym, and maybe you've had this experience yourself, whereby you might load up the bar with a certain amount of weights, and you've miscalculated, and you think you're going to be benching, you know, I don't know, 185 pounds or something. And actually, you've whacked on another, you know, 50 pounds on top of that.

And you get your 10 reps without realizing that actually you've now done 10 reps of your one rep max kind of thing. Plenty of people have had that experience. And a large part of that as well is mental, right? Like your brain's aim is to protect you at all times. So your brain will go, okay, well, this is a heavy weight. I'm going to injure myself if I lift more than I physically can. So I'm just going to turn down a little bit, right?

Just settle down. You don't need be doing this much. And it kind of places a little cap, right, on what it thinks that you can do. I don't know. Why does that happen? Why does a mother be, how is a mother able to get an adrenaline burst and lift a car off a child, right? At 135 pounds or whatever. These things kind of happen.

I think there's so much about the brain that we don't know. It's fascinating to consider. Now, do I think that we can run around and have X-Men powers and move cups with our mind? I don't, again, I don't personally think so. Who knows? Like, I'm always, like, a big fan of the unsatisfactory answer of who knows. But there's definitely something to be said for the power of mindset. And before we go there, I just want to make it really clear to people.

that when I say the power of mindset, I don't mean like manifesting things into reality by like sitting there and going, I believe that I can, you know, have a Ferrari and I'm just going to sit here and kind of pray on it and it just pops up. That's not what I mean by manifestation. Yeah. It is something weird about us that we want when we talk about mindset or ways to improve or ways to grow that part of us wants it to be simple. And yet, I think it was, was it, it was Dostoevsky that kind of went, like, if humans had everything and all we had to do is trouble ourselves with the reproduction of society and eat cake and bonbons, that we would destroy it all just to have something interesting to do, that we really, part of us thinks we want an easy life to just relax on beach and Cancun, soak up the sun, and just relax. but that isn't how we're designed. We love struggle. We love learning about struggle. We love seeing people overcome adversity. Like, you talk about the Rocky movies.

What is that, if not struggle? You talk about the Harry Potter movies. God, there's not a part of the movie where they're not overcoming some sort of hell or trying to fight off evil or negativity or bad peer groups. It's all mostly negative, but it's their mindset that's somewhat positive.

It's their optimism that things could be better and therefore they should be better. And that is where, again, meaning seems to be found. And so what made you interested in helping people change their mindset? And what meaning does that bring to your life? Probably the same amount of meeting as doing anything helpful, I think. you know, I could be working on other parts of psychology. I guess that might be equally as helpful, leadership, organizational development, all that kind of stuff.

But I think what I've noticed during my career is a trend towards fragility in society in general. So when I've worked with folks who, and this is, is total generalization. When I work with folks who tend to be of the older generation, actually their challenges tend to be too much rigidity, right? So a lot of it is I have a set perspective on what I think the world should be or what I think I should be in a self-concept and I'm going to do this and like a lot of that work is around helping them to develop a level of flexibility in their mindset. On the flip side, when I do a lot of coaching with younger folks now, more so, I would say increasingly I'm noticing a trend of, let's call

fragility, because we're putting in place things in society which I think, as you said, are really good around inclusion and safety, etc. But where inclusion and diversity and equity and safety kind of go into safetyism, I think it becomes problematic because it sets people up for a misunderstanding around what life really is like. And life is not trigger spaces and you know, sorry, trigger warnings and safe spaces and things like that. Life is messy. It's complicated. It's crap. It's tough. And, you know, to a certain, for large part, like, there's going to be things that you're going to see in the environment that are not going to be very pleasant for you. Now, should we not work to change those? Of course we should. Of course we should try to

eliminate structural issues. We're talking about things like racism and bias. Of course we should move towards eliminating those. But let's not pretend like, firstly, that's a realistic objective because I don't think that, I don't think that you can ever a hundred percent reduce or remove bias it's it's unfortunately i my perspective on that is it's kind of impossible because we're again hardwired with preference and where there is preference there's going to be a bias like you might say that this you know this mango tea drink is the best thing in the world and i take a sip of it and i go no this takes like crap all of a sudden i now have a bias against you and that drink because i don't i don't like it i don't prefer it you know i am a sony person and you're an xbox person or like i'm a

Panasonic person, you're a Tashiba person, whatever it is. Like, does that make me kind of act different towards you? Maybe not necessarily, right? So I think the brain has an infinite capacity for bias. And so that's why the aim of eliminating things like racism, et cetera, are probably challenging, if not impossible, I think. But we can work towards those things. And so I guess when I'm working with younger folks, what I tend to actually do more

of is less of the flexibility work and a little bit more around grit, although that's not real topic, let's say resilience or mental toughness or things like that. It's kind of like, how do you shore up your mind to things in the environment that are going to cause you distress so that you're not, let's, you know, traumatize every time you see something that is mildly offensive for you. And I'm totally kind of, you know, going spectrum to spectrum, but whole bunch of stuff in there but yeah if you had to put someone at a starting place do you find what the rigidity or the openness is more challenging to have the big fear people have right now in current culture is that it is going to be very difficult to get people motivated when they

believe there is no standards when there is no admiration that you are more physically fit than I am or that there is someone who's a better salesman than you are, that there's an idea that there's a hierarchy and that you can, there's so many different places to go in your life that you can be great in a hierarchy, you just have to pick one. You might not be the fastest runner, you might not be the best salesman, you might not be the best doctor, but maybe you're the best father and you're the most, that there's different hierarchies to choose from. Do you find any difference in the rigidity person that maybe it's easier for them to let off the gas? The thing that I'm thinking of right now is there's this kind of saying that you want the employee that is working too hard because then you can pull them back a little bit.

But God, is it hard to get someone who's not motivated at all to put their foot on the gas and get to work and start putting in long hours and doing it for the sake of improving the business or growing something that, like slowing down maybe a good example is like an Elon must slowing that person down is easier than taking some person who just sits around in. cheetos and getting them to get excited and motivated and hard working. Do you find that there's someone easier to work with that like pulling back the rigidity person or getting the person who's open to kind of get motivated? Do you find that there's a difference or an easier person to work with? It's kind of like, well, I don't want to speak outside of my subject about I was going to say it's kind of like physics and inertia. The word inertia kind of comes to mind for me though. It's a lot easier to get started, right, than it is to slow down. So, for sure, sure, like, I prefer, of course, working with people who are super motivated. And that gives me

energy. A large part of that is because I, myself, am very motivated and I kind of go, go, go all the time, et cetera. So I do think, like, my real passion probably comes in helping people be more flexible. And a large part of that is because, again, that piece around, like, personification or projection, all these kind of concepts that Freud and Jung kind of threw out there, this idea of, like, I see in the person that is, you know, too driven and too rigid, etc. I'm like, I've been there. I know where you are, right? This on an emotional level connects me to this person somehow. Obviously, then there's a professional kind of barrier that you put in there, right? So that you can actually help this person as opposed to just be friends with them. But I like working

with people who are rigid in their mindset because it's really deeply, I think, satisfying to get people into a shade of gray. I think we talked about this last time on the phone where society is, it feels like, it feels, I'm going to say it is, it feels like nowadays we, especially since Trump, people have been like a, well, it's either this or that. Like if you're not, if you're not a this person, then you're that person. If you're not, you know, if you're not speaking up against racism,

that you must be racism. If you're not this, then you are that, you know? So there's this kind of, I think, inherent black and white thinking that's, that's taken hold of society, potentially through social media, potentially through some of the social changes that are happening in America and how that's kind of extrapolating out to places like Canada, et cetera. So I think people are already there. So it's, of course, a little bit easier and a bit more rewarding for me to kind of go take that person and go, hey, you know, it doesn't have to be a false dichotomy. It doesn't have to be an either this

or neither that. It's not necessarily that if you can't do this job, then you are a failure, right? Or if you're not able to succeed in this area, then, therefore, then you're that. There's probably some gray space that we can see there. Right. So like that. Do you find that it's easy to work with people perhaps because they've already taken the first step of admitting that they aren't everything that they could be or that they could

be improved in some way? So, say, you have a family member. it's very hard to move someone who doesn't view themselves as needing help yet. So you have this background, you know about how to live a meaningful life, or at least you have inklings of what that might look like. Then you see a family member, a loved one, not doing that. And then you go, hey, you know what? Like maybe you're making these mistakes.

And then they go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, no one of your clients. I don't need your help. I've got everything I need. I've got food on my table. Don't bug me with your perspective, where typically you deal with people. who come in and say, my life sucks, or I'm so empty inside. And then you go, okay, well, we have a starting place, and you're admitting first that there's something wrong.

Do you find, like, a big difference in that, that people are overall open to your philosophy and the values that you bring outside of your clients? Do you find your clients easier to have these types of meaningful conversations with? I wouldn't do, like, let's say, coaching with someone by stealth. Like, let's say you and I were hanging out on a hike, I wouldn't just start coaching you without explicitly kind of talking about it. Like, hey, would you, you know, I'm noticing this. Would you mind if we coached on that for like half an hour?

Because it feels like you're like a little bit stuck in making a decision there. Would you find that helpful? So it would be, I think, an explicit permission seeking exercise. So if I was just like, we were going on this hike and I was like, oh, like I hate my job or whatever. like as a human being you might say like oh what have you thought about x y and z or would you try and avoid that out of hesitation that it's going to come across at coaching yeah no i probably wouldn't give you advice i probably i tend to be more curious anyway like as i probably would ask you more questions than give you thoughts so i would probably say well what is it about your

role that part of that of course if we're going hiking is um it's a energy saver for me to talk less So I don't want to be huffing and puffing. So I'm going to let you do all the huffing and puffing. So I'm going to say, what is it that you don't like about your job? And then I'm going to, you know, sit back and just enjoy. It's kind of like you, you would be the background track of my hike. And I think I'd get some real, you know, meaningful. Because firstly, it would be super interesting.

Yeah. Secondly, the more questions I ask you, the slower we go, the more I can enjoy nature. And then look, you know, sure, at a certain point, I might offer suggestions or whatever it is, but coaching is less about giving people suggestions and more about you finding your own path to. So this is an interesting thing about coaching, right? I think a lot of people think, well, if I go to a coach, they will tell me what to do. Actually, what they'll probably do is help you excavate the dirt that's sitting on top of the thing that you already know what to do. Remember early on, we talked about this idea of like, you know what the answer is. Sometimes

you don't know how to ask yourself the question. So that's kind of what a function of a good coach should be is like there's a layer of dirt sitting above that gold nugget that you have. And then go for you, it might be like the thing that I really want to do is actually quit my job. And that manifests says, I hate my job, I hate my boss, whatever it is. Okay, there's a whole bunch of stuff that's going to sit on the surface bills, like, oh, but I can't do this because of that.

And, you know, well, I'm stuck into a car lease and whatever. So as we explore those, that will be each layer kind of cleared off. And eventually, through questioning, through helping you find your own way, you kind of get to that gold nugget yourself and go, oh, my God, I think I need to quit my job. So I don't need to actually give you suggestions. You know what you should be doing regardless. Do you feel like the hopefully some people won't have access to a coach? But do you think that the right role of a partner, a life partner, a soulmate, a significant,

another is to help that person see their mountain? And do you think that that's typically the correct level of support? Because that's how my partner has personally been to me of I say, I want to start a podcast. She goes, how can I help you reach that? What would we need to do in order to do that? And how can we do it in a way where we're not spending too much time apart, but that we're making a positive impact? Do you think that that's typically the right role of a healthy relationship? Look, I'd say do what makes you happy. But I think actually what I'll kind of maybe steer folks towards is the things to actually watch out for when that starts getting in the way

because we typically do that out of a desire to be supportive and helpful and of course like even with family like talking about well this is my perspective I'm going to try to impose that on someone because I think I know better and that's actually where that's the biggest red flag that we should be mindful of and watch out for in relationships is there's kind of three levels let's say right sometimes we we can become fused with the other person so my my personhood my perspective my identity and your perspective your personhood and your identity kind of merge into one so your success is my success um if you don't symptoms of that might

be like if if i give you advice i might say to you well you should have you really thought about you know, starting a podcast? Obviously, yeah. Have you thought about starting your podcast? And then maybe you're not ready to start your podcast yet. And then two months later, you still haven't started it. And then I have a fight with you because I go, well, I know that you can do it and I told you you should do it and blah, blah, blah, because you might have come to me and said, I really miss, you know, bigger than me podcast. That name is now taken. Why I told you you should have started the podcast? I told you that two months ago, et cetera. Why am I getting angry at you? life, right? I'm getting angry at you because my anxiety and my sense of self is now tied

with your sense of self. So that's one thing to watch out for. On the flip side of that is disconnection, which is basically like, I don't even care about your experience. I'm oblivious to the fact that you might even be having experience, right? So those are the two extremes. And what I think we should be striving for is kind of this element of self-differentiation in relationships where I can be supportive to you. I can offer you advice. I can talk through, as you said, some of those things help you see your mountain.

But frankly, if you don't want to take my advice and go up that gully that I'm telling you to climb, I shouldn't be experiencing a great amount of distress or anger or frustration at that. Because if I am, I know I'm too connected to you and actually we're two different people, right? So there's always a choice. So I think, yes, to answer your question,

Absolutely. I think a good relationship definitely helps other folks, helps the other person in the relationship to explore their successes, you know, ride out their peaks and troughs and all that kind of stuff. But we should also be really mindful and not getting fused with the other person because then it becomes detrimental to the relationship. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think I've seen those challenges of wanting the person to either follow through or be something that maybe they're not very good at and struggling to kind of disconnect yourself and just want that person to reach their potential,

whatever it might look like. And I think it's important that you have those conversations regularly where you're reflecting on where you're going and what you want to do and have that space to change course without the person taking that personally. Have you had challenges with the term coach at all? because there's a lot of people who do not have your lived experience. So I think you have a psychological background, you work really hard, you've developed

yourself, you have a deep understanding of some of the tools that people can use, but I know people who have not had a lot of life experience who claim to be coaches or who try and provide overlapping services in concept of like, let's get you on the right path. And my concern is that there's people out there that I don't think set a good example in their own life that are trying to guide other people in their lives. A lot of the time, that can be priests, that can be religious folks who kind of take that role in society of like, hey, I'm going to help. And then they're giving marriage advice, even though they can never marry and that they've never had that relationship. And so they're trying and sometimes perhaps well. But there's this challenge with the idea of being a coach where there's a hope that the person like you is saying, this is more about the person talking first and me listening and helping them sort of answer questions where some hypothetical coaches go, I've got the three steps you need to take.

And once you take these three steps, you're going to reach your full potential and off to the races you'll go. Have you had any challenges with seeing other people in your space being like, we're not. not the same thing, but we have that same coach title. Yeah, I would be very, very careful personally of, like, anyone who claims to so a gimmick, three steps to this, and maybe that's just because I'm a cynical person, but, but I think that, firstly, some of that stuff loses the individuality, right? Now, at some point in my, you know, in my coaching practice, I might put out a product. Like, let's say, I might say, okay, what I'm noticing with my client.

is there's a lack of flexibility that we talked about. So actually there's going to be a course and it's going to be a six week program or whatever. And each week you learn a new psychological skill on how to be more psychologically flexible as an example. Great. But I think you also need to understand if you're going to be buying something like that, it's going to lack nuance. It's going to lack the kind of interpersonal touch. So if you want to use that as something to upskill yourself, because a lot of people don't have psychological skills, right? They don't have the mental skills to be able to do something. Great. Get those psychological skills. use it yourself.

It's the same way as you might sign up for a personal trainer's six-week program or 12-week program. Great. Take the workouts and then go do the workouts yourself kind of thing, right? If that's what you want to do, be aware that that's the level of service that you're paying for. I think there's probably two challenges that I have with coaching. Number one is like the misnomerate, like lived experience.

We're so focused on lived experience right now in our society that it's kind of a little bit annoying, to be honest. It's like, well, you don't have the same lived experience that I am. Again, I don't need to have climbed your mountain. I'm on a different mountain, mate. You know what I mean? So, so with the priest, I've never gone to a priest. I've never spoken to like a priest and confession. So I can't claim to know the level of service or advice that they provide if that priest was giving advice, you know, adjusted or tailored to your situation through a series of exploration questions and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, that might be helpful, right?

But again, if it's that kind of like cut and dry advice of like someone, if you're going to someone who calls himself a coach and they're telling you, well, you know what you should do. You should do this. I kind of go, okay, firstly, that's problematic because if I was to ask you, let's say, as a client, to do something, it would probably be something akin to I'm seeing that you're not wanting to take a step. let's say you're not wanting to start your podcast.

Again, I'm going to go super broad, super basic. I see that you're not willing to start your podcast in like six sessions. That's all you've talked about is this podcast, this podcast that you want to start. And at that point, I might say, okay, well, so how confident are you at starting this podcast? These are the actions that you said you were going to take. And you say, well, I'm four out of ten. Okay. What would we need to do to get you to like an eight out of ten?

Okay. And after that question, if I'm still not happy with the answer, I might actually, say something like, okay, you know, I'm going to make a request of you. In, and you can feel free to say yes, no, or give me a counteroffer. In before the next session, I want you to create a list of, you know, your value proposition or create a website or whatever that one action is. That is what I want you to do in the next, before the next session. Are you willing to do that?

And you might tell me, yeah, okay, you know what? I'll do it, but it's like it should be used sparingly, right? it should be like my, my, my, my, me telling you what to do should be kind of peppered through, oh, I don't know, like one percent of the time. Most of the time, it's actually work me trying to, um, broaden the cognitive dissonance that you have around why aren't you, why aren't you getting off your ass and doing this thing that you said you want to do so that you get to the end of the session. Typically like, what happens is we get to the end of our session and like the person I'm

talking to goes, oh my God, okay, you know what? I've got these are the things I'm going to do. I can't even say goodbye because I'm going to go run and do these things because they feel motivated and engaged and do them themselves, right? It's not because I've told them to. They know what they need to do kind of thing. So I think any time someone comes in and goes straight away, like, well, you know, I'm an 18 year old and I think that you should be doing these things because that's the hustle and grind

mindset or whatever it is, that's a red flag. People who don't have any sort of background accreditation, like if you're a salesperson and you're calling yourself a coach, I would be as a buyer wanting to see their coaching credentials, basically. There's an organization called the ICF International Coaching Federation, and that's kind of accrediting body for coaches, let's say. So if I was going to you as a coach and I knew you didn't have, let's say, the background for it, I would want to know that you have some sort of credential or you've done a course

or something like that, that actually equips you with the skills to be a coach. So that's number one. And number two, you know, for someone like me who has a psychology background, who was a registered psychologist in Australia and has since renounced that.

I feel like, I feel dirty saying that because I feel like I've cast off like the mantle. I've come to Canada and I'm kind of like, I don't know, it's kind of like I was the once forgotten king and I've left my grandma. Anyway, so it doesn't that? That's kind of the vibe I get that.

So as someone who, was a practicing psychologist in Australia who has done this stuff. Like, that to me, if I approached someone like that and they didn't have a credential, I would be a little bit more comfortable, right? Because I kind of go, okay, at least this person has some sort of training and foundation. Because it's an unregulated profession. So you've got to be careful, right? Yeah.

One of the challenges, I think, is for so many, is within indigenous culture, we have elders. There's spiritual advisors as well. but there's elders, and they're able to be there for the person throughout their life. As I had one guest on, and she talked about how elders can kind of be there and see small traits in the child start to develop. Oh, wow, they're going to be a great leader one day. Look at how they're kind of directing the other little kids in what they're doing. And so they can kind of go, I think that will be a great chief one day,

and they can kind of have those insights. And then over time, they'll be able to go to them if they're struggling with substance use or marriage problems, and there isn't an end date. I'm just interested in your thoughts with the challenge of having a set time frame of like, we hope to see you veer back on the right path within six months or a year. And obviously people don't have endless amounts of money so they can't continue coaching forever. But what are your thoughts on sort of that limitation that we have with people where there is

a certain amount of transactional nature to the process of the thing I don't like about always sending people to counseling service as a native court worker is that there's a goal to have an end date. And for someone who's struggling with alcoholism in their life, they're going to fall down in six months, in five years, and ten years, when they're going through big life transitions, and then we kind of cut them off, and then you have to restart. And there's this feeling with people I've dealt with after they've done counseling, which is, I've done counseling. So I got it. And it's like, we almost need like a space in society to allow people to say, I'm just going to fall down at various points in my life. And I need to maybe see a coach every couple of years.

I need to kind of get back on track. I need to get motivated in my life again. I just, I'm curious as to your thoughts on the parameters we sort of put in Western culture, that there is some sort of end date where you're going to be good. I see this all the time with leaders that I do kind of training with, et cetera. It's like sometimes I will have at least one person in a leadership session, at least of like, let's say, 20 people, 15 people. They will say, well, I've done this before. I've done leadership training before. I'm like, well, you're still a crappy leader.

So clearly it hasn't really helped you very much, right? So just because you've done something that doesn't mean necessarily that you've mastered it or honed it. Like, you know, great, I've, I don't know, like, I've gone for a hike once. It doesn't make me a hiker. I've swam in the pool. That doesn't make me an Olympian kind of thing, right? So I think self-development is an ongoing thing. Substance abuse, of course, or anything that's serious requires real long-term investment, right?

So I think that's why I like to play in the coaching space because, frankly, I really like performance, right? And there's a subset of psychologists and psychiatrists that will work with people with long-term chronic issues. And there's a market for that. So I think those people are really good at what they do. And I respect them because I don't have the mental fortitude of resilience. I started my career in working with folks who were psychologically and physically injured. I did about one and a half years in that space. I went, wow, this is depressing for me. It's just too, it's too heavy. You know, I get energized by action and progress, et cetera. So as opposed to pulling people out of the mud, I like to push them down a hill, send them on their way, kind of thing, right?

So for me, what I would want from coaching is I want people to get skills that they don't otherwise have with the recognition that, yeah, you're going to have to, if you're not practicing these things, if you haven't actually put in, let's say, a plan or a behavioral strategy to make this part of your habit, there's going to be top ups that you need to do. remember I talked about my parents and them talking about, like, you know, asking some those questions about where did that come from, et cetera? Well, that was what, like 25, 30 years ago? And I'll be honest with you, like, in the last few years with COVID, et cetera, like, a lot of the conversations that I'm having with them is like, hey, guys, like, you need to get back on that because now we've, they've kind of, they did the hard work, they're in a different space, and they're forgetting some of those fundamental things.

So I'm like, remember you used to do that. You got to get back into that. into that swing of things. There is, of course, there's a challenge with anything that's kind of finite. I am a big fan just because I am, I like action orientation. I'm a big fan of action-oriented kind of coaching and things like that, just because I think we need to get clear, though, on what is it doing for you? So, number one, if you have huge, long-standing issues that you need to unpack,

I don't even think that a psychologist who takes, let's say, a cognitive behavioral therapy or acceptance and commitment therapy might be the best approach. I actually think that things like psychoanalytic work, so going to see a psychiatrist that's trained more in psychoanalytic, psychodynamic work, et cetera. So these are people, that's the typical stuff where, you know, you have folks who go to see a therapist once a week for 10 years or whatever, right? So that's where that lives. I think there's a space for that.

as much as I'm going to get a lambasted by some folks in the in psychology industry because what we're taught in uni is, okay, once cognitive behavior therapy came along, it's pretty much the best thing since sliced bread. And so anything to do with like Freud and Jung and, you know, thinking about like your parents and psych. All of that stuff is like, you know, it's like dinosaur stuff. But it's really, really powerful. We need that stuff for people with, I think, with longstanding issues. So I think it's tailoring the solution to the person. People with PTSD

or challenges like that might benefit from EDT, I think I want to say it's called, which is, you know, it's a form of therapy whereby basically, like, the therapist tries to simulate rapid eye movement. EMDR. EMDR. What did I say? EmDT.

Something like that. Maybe I was thinking of DBT. There's so many acronyms, okay, forgive me. Yes, EMDR, yeah. So you're trying to replicate the rapid eye movement of the, you know, sleep, et cetera, meant to be really, really profound for people with trauma, right? I've done it, yeah. So Fanta, what, did you find it useful?

Yeah, but more recently I've learned the benefits of like just walking and talking because it's the exact same concept, because you're getting that rapid eye movement, as Andrew Huberman talks about, you put yourself into landscape mode when you're walking and running, and then your eyes do the back and forth, and then when you're talking, you're getting a lot of those benefits of reflect if like my partner and I will go for long like 15 kilometer walks and we'll talk about everything and we'll talk about the challenges with our family the challenges with a class and then you're getting that rapid eye movement benefit while moving and so the only error that I think a lot of counselors make is they do it in a clinical setting

and they don't ever say to the person hey if you go out if you go for hikes if you're putting yourself in that landscape mode and talking to a close friend and venting, you're actually getting a lot of the same benefits. You just don't need this $200, $300 machine that does that for you. And then we have doctors in BC now prescribing people to go outdoors. Why don't you just do a counseling session on a quiet trail where they're getting some of that benefit out in nature rather and teaching them, this is a trail in your community that you could go do when I'm not here or when our session's done. And so kind of giving people the tools to continue. continue to improve and reflect beyond just the counseling session is something I really like.

It's funny that you say that because I've been really touring with the idea of doing like coaching on the mountain. Yeah. Like taking folks for like a high not anything challenging or serious, but like, you know, taking them up on the mountain and just and doing coaching while we're doing that. So it's funny that you say that. Yeah. So EMDR really helpful.

But you take it and you use it for the situation that you have. So for me, I would say something like an action oriented coaching kind of stuff. that's a good it's it's not a surrogate for community it's not a surrogate for long-term improvement and anything like that what it is is it basically should give you a set of these skills for you to be able to go okay i now have something in my arsenal that i i didn't have before um i know how to how to use mindfulness i know what my values are i know how to set some goals i know how to be you know positive or reframe or separate myself from my feelings and see themselves as separate. These are tangible skills that I now have. So I'm going to basically take those and

kind of run with it. And yeah, it is an ongoing piece of work, unfortunately. You've talked about values a fair bit. Can you talk to us about what values look like, how people can start to sort that kind of question out in their own mind? So, yeah, there's a couple of pieces around values, right? So number one, a value must be freely chosen. So that's really important. If it's not freely chosen or if a value feels like it's constraining to you, that becomes a principle and then that loses its value. So there's a big difference between values and principles, number one. Number two, what a value should do is it should inspire to, you know, inspire action, basically

motivate towards action, inspire towards action. Values can be things like constant improvement, health, fitness, family. They're basically words, right? that provide us with a true north. And what that allows you to do is, when we're faced with choice points, as we are in everyday life, a choice point might be something like,

is a good choice one. It's 5 p.m., it's 5 p.m. and I just got an email and it says, hey, urgent, can you get me this slide deck tomorrow morning, right? So the choice is, do I, do that piece of work for that person or do I go home and let's say see my family and play with my kids right so that's a that's a choice that I have if you don't know what values you hold if you're being reactive right and not necessarily conscious of what's what you're doing

in terms of the actions that you're taking you might well just go you know what like bang autopilot mode I'm putting together the slide deck I'm back home at 9 p.m. right but I've done the thing that's been asked with me. Very different kind of path. So that's path number one, right? If we go right back to the start of that choice point, you get the email, path number two might be,

actually, what are the values that I hold? So you talked about family as being really important to you. Okay, in that instance, if you were in contact with your value of family, what might that, what action might you take in alignment with that? So what you actually might do in that situation is right back to the person and go,

Oh, no, not today. No, well, you might say it a little bit more professionally. You might say something like, apologies, you know, the time, I will happily glad you get you the slide deck by close the business tomorrow. And you will go home and spend time with your family. Now, because that's important to you, that's going to make you feel fulfilled. It's going to make you feel authentic to yourself, et cetera. When we consistently act in ways that are contrary to our values, we start feeling that

sense of inconsistency, that sense of dissatisfaction, et cetera. And it's also one of the things that we observe most in others. Typically, I see it at work all the time. I see it in conflict, especially. So you and I might have a different value set. And actually, we saw it so much, by the way, during the pandemic, right? Like the vaxxers versus the anti-vaxes, right? Realistically, like a chunk of that was around, like, values and morals, right? It's like one. group of people valued safety or health or, I don't know, like protection or whatever it is, right? Like people who were like, no, no, no, we need to like stay home all the time, 15 masks, all that kind of stuff. And then you have this other group of people who were like,

no, I'm going to drive to Ottawa and protest and I'm going to call myself truck drive and all that kind of stuff. Okay. So these folks, they value freedom and liberty or whatever, right? Why does this group piss this group off so much, right? It's because, Because my way of looking at the world and your way of looking at the world, so different, right? They conflict. So I see that all the time in interpersonal conflict as well. It's like it's not about the thing. It's not about the vaccine or about the fact that you're driving a truck or whatever it is.

It's about the fact that actually I value respect and you value directness. Or I value empathy and you value this or whatever it is. You know, I value money. You value people. Yeah? Okay. I know Jordan Peterson can be a bit of a, Jordan Peterson can be a bit of a controversial figure, but it lands on that same, the most profound aspect of his research and his thinking is around what brought the U.S. and Russia into a Cold War, and because it was a difference in values. A communist country had certain values that were directly opposed to a capitalistic kind of value structure and a Western value structure.

and he that was his question is why are we pointing nuclear weapons at each other and how did we get to this point and economists a political scientist all argued it was over resources and how we were structured and he argued it was fundamentally about the difference in our values and we were valuing freedom individuality the effort you put in should be the effort that you get out that it shouldn't all just go into a pool and that obviously makes some Some people choose to be lazier than others, and then you have two different value systems at odds with each other, and then they wanted to see which one was better. And so they competed, and on Netflix, they have this amazing, I think it's History 101, and they go through the competition around going to space and how Russia and the U.S. were sincerely having like a cold war over who was going to get to space, and Russia was beating them, and they were beating them, and they were beating them. And then finally, who puts their feet on the moon?

It's the USA and it's a milestone for the country and it's a cultural revolution. And then Russia starts to fall. And shortly after that, things start to change. And then now most people, not everyone believes that the Western culture has tenants that are more valuable that allow it to sustain for a longer period of time. And it's very much to your point about we look at one group as different. as wrong, even though they're valuing something else, but it's almost like we can devalue them if they don't match our values. Has that been a struggle for you? Are you able to see these things kind of come up and go, that's where that's coming from? This person has different values than me

because it's been one of the topics that I've been very careful on talking about, which is I don't think we can ignore the truckers. So I've tried to bring it up a little bit more of just acknowledging the fact that these are human beings and they might you might disagree with most of what they have to say but if there is a core group of people that are saying something we should probably take what they have to say and I love the term steel manning which is to take their position even though you might disagree with it and think they're all but wrong and go through and say is there anything here is there any nugget of knowledge of of insight that I can take from it rather than straw manning or mocking their position and being like oh

they don't even know anything and they're hillbillies who should be gotten rid of and if we could just ship them to the US our country would be so much better rather than doing that critically thinking about like the people even when you think of protesters who are fighting for the environment most of us can say well uh in Vancouver recently they just took a van and stopped it in the middle of a bridge maybe that's not the best approach but what they're trying to tell you is we are destroying the environment and maybe we should do something about that and maybe the court system isn't doing all that it could to act in the best interest because the court goes there's principle one principle two principle three these people check all the principles so there's nothing for us to do here that doesn't make it correct that doesn't make when you're talking about a robert picton that doesn't mean that what happened was fair just because the court was involved uh that doesn't mean for the families that they felt justice just because he's going to be in jail forever it doesn't mean that the court is the end all and be all and the protesters are saying the institution has failed us because we're destroying Ferry Creek or the oceans or contaminating

whales or contaminating the Inuit and that's an imperfect system if it's yielding X result and the protesters hypothetically are arguing hey this is not good this is we had a society based on certain values and we're not respecting those values the way we'd like to see them done is that a challenge for you or are you able to really be more aware on where values are playing a role in people's lives and kind of go through that kind of lens. I would say that I am transcendent like the Buddha. I'm above all of that stuff. No, I actually had a huge...

Yeah, like, typically I would say I'm a centrist. I lean more towards the political left in that, you know, traditional liberal values, you know, abortion, like gay marriage, all that kind of stuff. gender rights like do do whatever you want kind of thing you know what I mean like I there's a reason why I think my parents came to Australia other than than just a fiscal reason of not being able of afford Canada but they could have moved to you know my my godfather moved to Israel they could have gone to Europe a number of other different countries I'm sure there's something that appealed to them about the idea of like those

Western values of liberty and freedom and all the stuff that you said right so typically I do think that I generally have been good at removing myself from the fray and just standing outside of that a little bit and going, hey, can we just look at this in a little bit more of a balanced lens? Because I feel like you're giving this and not a fair shake. But I did have a huge challenge. I have to say with that during the start of the pandemic, I went probably through my own little four-month bump where, like, yeah, I got hooked, you know? I got hooked around a lot of the stuff that I was seeing because being a rational-minded person, the decisions that, and by the way, I feel genuinely blessed to live in

British Columbia during this time because if I had lived in Melbourne, I think I probably would have been even more pissed off and more triggered by some of the stuff that was happening in Melbourne with the lockdowns and all that kind of stuff. So good on your Bonnie, like you've done, I think, as much of a good job as any one could have done during the last three years. So that should be said but I totally found myself like just just hooked and pulled in the direction of like firstly by my own kind of sense of liberty et cetera being trodden on a little bit and then also by things like you know well don't wear masks because they don't work that was a message that was kind of you know out there and then very rapidly no no wear double masks

or wear this kind of mask the science hasn't changed you know the science hasn't changed you know the on that hasn't changed. Masks have always worked to a certain degree to protect against infection to a certain direction, all that kind of stuff. Depends on the mask, whatever, right? Like, none of that changed. It was the inkling that, like, the reason why you're telling us this is because of X. And so in the instance of the pandemic, we had shortages of N95s. So you can't afford everyone just panic buying like they did with a toilet paper with masks because then the healthcare workers have no, you know, So there's a reason why, but for sure it undermined the trust. Like, I already am a skeptical person.

So not only do I like liberty, but also having that kind of the background that my parents have in the Soviet Union. Like, intrinsically, there is no trust in government. Like, my parents have, oh, I won't say they don't have trust in government. But, like, they grew up in a time where, you know, my grandfather was taken to, you know, a concert, like a gulag, essentially. he was an engineer he was taken in the middle of the night by the KGB they never saw him again kind of thing right for um saying something that was kind of contrary to the to the party line so like this stuff is kind of very ingrained so there's like a natural mistrust I would be great in the American South I think I think like if I moved to Florida Texas like they would

welcome you with my mask because I'll be like yeah like don't tread on me no um so there's There's that piece. There's a piece around like me enjoying liberty and freedom and all that kind of stuff because that's why we moved to the West. And that kind of came together in this weird thing right around like the vaccines and this and that and during COVID. And what it actually did is it took, it took a lot of mental effort to be able to pull myself out of that. A large part of that I attribute to, I don't know whether you, do you know who Z-dog MD is? So he's a, he's a doctor and he's a, a podcaster and a, you know, public figure. And anyway, so he, he has a great show. And that's, honestly, was one of the things that really helped peel me away from the mountain side, the mountain face that I was on, because he was kind of bringing a balanced perspective around things like vaccines or things like, you know, COVID or whatever. Like, he was actually kind of going, well, you know, yes, they're effective, but blah, blah, blah.

or, you know, no, they're not going to kill you, but they may increase. So he was kind of basically synthesizing the research, you know, I would say in a non-controversial way, in a way that really brings the middle, old middle perspective as opposed to a left or right. And that's what I was kind of seeing. It's like, it's either this, either the vaccines are like a gift from God and they can do no wrong. Or, on the other hand, of course, everyone was saying, no, the vaccines are, like everyone who's taken a vaccine. scene is going to die in the next two years. It's like, you think that's going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back?

Like, come on, all the crap that you put in your body, like, this is going to be the thing that tips it over. So, like, I had to peel myself away into this kind of middle space. And you need to avoid living in an echo chamber. I think that was the thing that I learned is because I was so removed from my social circle, all of my friends being in Australia. And you don't, you know, when you're on those other. side of the world, it's really hard to catch up like this with, with your friends every,

every week like I would. So my, my best friend kind of typically had that role of he was the person that I would bounce ideas off of. So I could say to him, well, I don't think that, you know, like Bonnie is being super realistic with us around masks. And he'd, he'd kind of be the person that would almost be my Jiminy cricket. And he'd go, well, have you thought about the fact that Maybe healthcare workers are going to be at shortage of masks if everyone starts panic planning. I don't care why. Hadn't thought of that. Okay.

All of a sudden, bang, I'd reconcile the two sides. I'm okay with this position, you know? And because I didn't have that, I was just pinging around this like Facebook slash Instagram slash Twitter sphere. And you choose, don't you? You choose what Twitter sphere or what echo chamber you're in. And every time you hit like, you get reinforced. exactly what you already thought without even

knowing it. I don't want to see this anymore. I don't want to see memes that inflame and trigger me. I'm done. But they're like, but you did pause on that meme for like 0.5 a second longer than the other one that you stopped on. So you must like it. Yeah, I think that one of the

challenges, and it was actually with a past prime minister for Australia. I don't know what the leadership name of it is. But he was in power a few years prior to the new leadership during COVID, and he was talking to Mr. Peterson about what the challenges Western countries face as opposed to the United States, because they fought for their

freedoms against disconnecting from Britain. And so they had to write a declaration of independence. They had to think, and they had brilliant thinkers who were wondering how you enshrine freedom of speech. How do you protect the Second Amendment? What is this program? going to look like, and John Stuart Mills, like, reading his paper in law school about freedom of speech and why it's important is such a trip, because I don't think anyone's written it better, and it's been 100 years. It's been over 100 years, and no one's had the piercing argument that he had around freedom of speech. And so to think about that and go, like, wow, there was like a cultural shift with this country, and it was specific to this

country. And so the prime minister, the past prime minister at the time, talked about how, because Australia, Canada, because these countries sort of just siphoned off some of the momentum, instead of having to earn it themselves, there's less of an appreciation for it. Where we kind of, right now, like I've interviewed a bunch of different journalists about what's going on with the Online News Act, and is it good, is it bad? What are the flaws within having government give money to journalistic organizations, there's benefits, there's cons, there's dangers towards having the government influence and support media, but there's benefits to the fact that Canada really is, and so Australia to a certain extent, is influenced by the United

States. And so it's hard for us to get our own news and figure out what the heck's going on here without us going, well, what's going on in the United States? And when we think about the Supreme Court of Canada, nobody can name any of our judges. Yeah, in the States, people in Canada can name every single one of their judges and their political leanings and how they came to ex-decision, Roe v. Wade, whatever it is. And so there's these challenges. And in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, we've all kind of just gained the rights and the freedoms without having to really think about it. And so in the United States, they have founding fathers.

And even we know to a certain extent who the founding fathers are and how momentous of an occasion that was. It was a milestone on planet Earth, and it moved so many countries into a Western approach. And even the idea of, like, Western culture is like an interesting idea because it's not just one place. It seems to have percolated in places like Israel, in places like Australia, in different places around the world. And the fact that we didn't have to earn those values or really think about where they came from or why they're important and why they're supposed to be non-negotiable is something. that we struggle with, and I just interviewed Joel Backin, who made the movie The Corporation all about how corporations have all these problems. But we talk a bit about the charter.

And one of the, some would argue the benefit and one would argue the con is that we have Section 1, which basically says all of the rights and freedoms guaranteed to you are limited under certain circumstances. And in a just and free society, you have these rights, but we'll restrict them if need be. And the court has to go through what's called the Oaks test. He helped develop that test. And that's why it was interesting to talk to him is because he had to interpret the Charter of Rights and freedoms and come up and work obviously with other people to develop this test to see if we can encroach on your rights. So one example that we talked about was drinking and driving.

Originally, you can't be stopped and seized at any time. But we have an allow in Canada police stops to say, hey, can we see your driver's license, want to make sure that you're sober. And we allow that encroachment on your right to not be exposed to illegal search and seizures for the safety of society. And so some might argue that's not fair. I should never be stopped by a police officer unreasonably. Yet we allow that because at scale, that's going to do society some good. The U.S. does not have something similar. All of their rights are guaranteed no section one, no debate.

And so we took their ideas and somewhat modified them. and during times like a pandemic it's unclear to some whether or not that section one was a good move because I had people reach out and say you're in law school is this legal is this right and it's like that section one test it's probably going to pass because the question of whether or not this is going to benefit society as a whole is pretty easy to answer in the situation most people are going to see that this is a benefit and other people would argue well then we shouldn't have section one if it leaves us vulnerable to this because freedom's should be absolute. And it's a complex conversation. And there's a lot of history that you have to go back to the United States in order to understand why the freedoms matter and to really articulate why freedom of speech matters. Because as Mr. Peterson argues, freedom of speech is basically freedom to think. And if you can't speak about something, then you're not really free to think about something. I'm just moving away from that topic, history is important. And in psychology, you have really interesting people that seem to not be, like, Jung is not just known in the psychological field, where John Stuart Mills, I doubt most people outside of the legal community know who he is or what he thought.

Within psychology, you have, people will say, oh, Freudian slip. They've kind of surpassed their circle of influence, their sphere of, like obviously most psychologists know of them, but they kind of transcend. send that community and we'll know about them. I'm just interested in your thoughts on some of the movers and shakers within psychology. Who kind of influenced you? Did you get a lot of benefit from reading certain psychologists from the past? Did they shape your perspectives at all? Yeah, I think the ones that tend to move into the cultural zeitguise, it's like a little bit

of a random mix, isn't it? Because you kind of go, who do people know? Gay, Freud and Jung? people probably also know like Daniel Kahneman thinking fast, thinking slow there's folks like Gadzad, Stephen Pinker

Jonathan Hyde, these are all psychologists who did we get exposed to a lot that's funny because I think a lot of the folks that we would get exposure to in university there'd be people who

would create a model of some sort, you know, Vroom and Yetten around, you know, decision making. Or it's like, these are, these mean nothing to the average bear. I don't know why I've made a yogi reference there. Do you have any thoughts on maybe Freud? Because I think there's a good point that a lot of the profound ideas he had around id, ego, and super ego. We just adopted that into our society and totally forgot that it was him that did it. But then most people I've met know him for his, oh, you're interested in your, like, marrying your mother and those types of ideas.

We remember him for all his flaws and everything brilliant that the man thought, we sort of forget that he did that. Yeah, well, see, he's done also, I really like his book on the interpretation of dreams. I mean, again, these are very, I would say, probably like the Stuart Mills essay, I'm going to go out and say, It was probably dry and of the time, and I'm sure that it wasn't, you know, you wouldn't pick these things up and kind of read them the same way you would, even Harry Potter, or the Twilight books or 50 Shades of Grey or something like that. So it's not like light reading, but they're just wonderful books, right? Did he have some wacky ideas?

Yeah. But, you know, like a lot of these folks did have, they push the envelope or the boundary in certain ways. You know, you have the Zimbardo prison experiments. You have some really great and terrible stuff coming. I say great and terrible stuff coming out in like the 50s, 60s and 70s before. Ethics procedures were really like robust, you know. The prison experiment, you had these, you know, the classic experiments on like, I think it's Ash with the, basically you would have a circle of pit folks and you would have three lines. One of those lines was longer than the others and basically you kind of got around and I'm totally butching the experiment it's been a while

but the premise is everyone in the group in the circle is a plant so they're in on the experiment apart from one person one person that's the actual um the person who's kind of unaware of what's happening and so they go around the room and you go okay which line is shorter and they will go the one that's the longest for example they go that's the shortest line and everyone would say the same thing. And by the time that you get around to this last person who's actually not in on the joke, like some ridiculous proportion of people would actually also go along with it and be like, yeah, that's the one. Or, you know, the experiments where you would hook someone up to electrodes that aren't necessarily connected to electricity and you have the person

kind of in the back on and the scientists going, okay, yep, so we're going to just administer a 20-volt shock, no worries. And then you switch the thing on and it's a, it administers, there's a shock to the person, the person yells, and the experiment was basically trying to replicate this idea of, like, how do you get people who just do, you know, well, it was just orders, like during the Nazi regime, how do you get people to commit atrocities? And it's actually surprisingly easy, apparently.

Yeah. Surprisingly. So, yeah, everyone wants to think that they're different and all that kind of stuff. So that, I find that stuff really interesting, like psychology went through a really fascinating dark period, where it was quite obviously post-World War II obsessed with understanding how do abuses of power happen? How did these kind of horrific, dreadful things occur? And before World War II, you had this kind of, you know, this beautiful gold exploration phase of like, you know,

you're Jung and Freud and trying to figure out what is the unconscious mind and all that kind of stuff. But honestly, like psychology goes right back to the Grecian days. You know, they were also quite interested in the nature of consciousness. What does that look like? I don't know. Have we made huge leaps and strides? There is a replication crisis in psychology, so I would be careful to over-interpret a lot of stuff.

Have you heard about the replication crisis? Okay. So basically what happened was a large chunk of these quite popular psychological studies and theories were basically subject to what's the premise of, you know, scientific rigor, right? Is it should be replicatable. So if you have this result, you should be able to replicate it again, given the same conditions. And upon testing that theory, they found like this huge amount of studies basically were not able to be replicated.

Part of that was around, you know, shoddy methods and something called P-hacking where basically they look for the statistical outcome that they're after. So it's, it is, you know, dodgy statistical manipulation, all that kind of stuff. So there's a bunch of stuff in the popular consciousness that, yeah, that doesn't hold a lot of statistical bearing, right? So that's also something to be mindful of is as much as I think psychology thinks of itself as a hard profession. and I think they call themselves the oldest profession because I think that was one of the first degrees or whatever it is.

So they often talk about that being the oldest profession. Like honestly, like we don't know a whole bunch, right? We have some good stuff. We have some stuff. But it seems to be, I don't know, it seems to be a little bit unsatisfying. Because it's hard to quantify the human mind. There's so many things that,

the mind does to impact, you know, our sense of reality, right? Like, even think about the studies on eyewitness testimonies and identification, all that kind and stuff, like, the brain is just not to be trusted, frankly. Yeah, absolutely. When you think about, like, even when you go for a walk, you think, like, I know what my walk is. And it's like, could you count all the pieces of grass? Could you count all the leaves?

Could you count how much water is flowing through? could you analyze how many rocks you've walked along like you could never and then we go i understand this world and everything makes pretty much sense to me and i drive to work and everything works fine and so i know some things another piece i wanted to ask you about was picking your sacrifice we've talked about how i think you said life is pain suffering is optional how do we go about making those tough decisions of where we want to go in this life of it's not like you get to choose a $10 million home or struggle. It's you get a lot of hard work or you get medium work, maybe go home to your family. It's ironic to me that the hardest working people are the people

out there doing farm work right now in 35 degree weather, biking home, often immigrants or migrants from another country, filling short-term roles, getting paid less than minimum wage. and then we complain in an office space that our job is hard and then we've got what is it called the tech um tech stress and then we think we're hard done by and then we think about them and we're like oh my god I can't even imagine what they're going through and I get uncomfortable in an AC room and then they're out there 35 degree weather just putting in hard days

and so there's a certain element of like picking your sacrifice and trying to choose a direction for your life you choose to do incredible hikes from my perspective and you bring your dog and I'm just interested what does it mean to choose your sacrifice and when you think of the quality of life you could have you sit at home AC watch TV not have to go outside not have to push yourself yet you push yourself really hard do hard hikes that 99% of people don't do in their day why what is this benefit that we seem to experience when we push ourselves and try and overcome adversity and make some sort of sacrifice. You talked about that idea of, you know, the Dostoevsky quote,

like if, you know, if we, if life was a utopia and if we just were kind of left to our own devices, we'd still probably destroy the world just to, you know, feel something kind of thing. Both of us, I think, ruined that quote. But, yeah, I like that because that to me, It resonates with this conversation specifically. I think there is something that we are missing out on as human beings if we don't engage in. I sound like Joe Rogan. I'm pretty sure he said this before, but he'll be like, you know, we need to engage in some sort of like, you know, physical stress to simulate our primal environment.

I'm sure that he's probably said something like that. But I do think that there is some real merit to that. I think that there is something that, you know, that feels really good about pushing yourself beyond your limits. It feels horrible, to be honest. Do I enjoy those hikes? I'll show you a picture of the last traverse that I do with my dog and I'll be honest with you. Like I got a bunch of hate for that and, you know, like, you know, your dog shouldn't be on that mountain and this and that. And I'm like, okay, well, first to calm down, you know, we're taking calculated risks.

But secondly, either way, it is stressful for me, you know, because the whole time he's incredibly well behaved. He is made for the mountains. He, you know, we've been doing this for, you know, he's three now. So we've been, you know, hiking now for three years. And not like hiking in Lynn Valley or, you know, Mount Tom or something like that. Like these are challenging hikes, backcountry, all that kind of stuff. So he knows what he's doing.

and we work together as a team. But that still doesn't take away from the fact that, like, the whole time, my mind is basically preoccupied with two things. His survival and my survival, root finding. So it doesn't leave a huge amount of time for me to stop and smell the roses. We'll stop and get to our summit and we'll chill out and I'll kind of enjoy that for a bit. And then the next kind of question becomes, okay, well, how do we get down? So it's kind of like it's constant problem solving.

I'm constantly aware of wildlife Like he doesn't chase wildlife or anything like that But like what if there was a bear What if there was a goat? Like I want to make sure that I respect You know Respect the animal life that that's there Right even though

That we wouldn't have any issues He loves marmots so like the sound that they make Like he's so alert Like he hears the high fish squeak And he's just like What was that? So yeah it's I don't think that you would choose that

to be honest, if you were a normal person, same with Jiu-Jitsu. Would I choose to be doing Jiu-Jitsu, you know, getting choked out, arm-locked, leg-locked, foot-locked, body-locked, head-locked, I don't know. I think I've pretty much got all the locks. I don't know whether a same person would choose that. And yet there is something profoundly rewarding about placing yourself under physical duress, whether it's at the gym, running, hiking, you know, martial arts, something like that. The same actually translates to other areas like I think about music, right? Like

playing an instrument, learning a language, all these things. These are like a different. They challenge the mind more than the body, right? But to me, what it does for me personally is when I do those things, I don't feel like the stresses. and the hurdles of day-to-day life feel as big, you know, because I kind of go, okay, like I survived, and I'm not taking my dog nest, says, oh, the accidents do happen, but, you know, I'll go and do a scramble that's particularly difficult, or a mountaineering adventure or something like, I survived that, I could have probably died. Like, I probably could, you know, people have died in these, in these areas.

And so when I come back to, you know, to my day-to-day job, and I get an unpleasant email or my boss is frustrated with me or whatever, it just doesn't seem as much of a big deal, to be honest, because like life is, it brings maybe that's what it is talking out loud. I think what it is it, is it recalibrates your sense of perspective in the universe. Have you seen some of my drone, like footage and drone shots? Like, I always bring my drone with me and there's a reason why I love putting that footage together on my YouTube channel and stuff. A lot, part of it mainly, actually, it's for me. I'm not trying to start a YouTube channel or anything like that. But I have that stuff there because I'll watch it as well

if we go through a rainy period because it recontextualized that again. I look at that and go, you're an ant. You know, you're just basically an ant and you're on this, you know, as you said, that chunk of rock spinning through time and space, it really doesn't matter. Life is really ultimately sounds horrible, but it ultimately is meaningless. And we need to find things that bring us satisfaction and meaning and joy. I don't think there's an intrinsic something that's like a greater purpose, you know, like, well, we have this, this greater thing that we're meant to do, right? This is the purpose of life. I'm a little bit more like defeatist and like, yeah, I do think that life is pointless to a large degree, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't

have to have a point, right? It doesn't mean that you can't be satisfied. or engaged or get the most out of every second that you hear. So it's depressing, but it's also not depressing. I don't know how that works. Isn't that how most of things are? Is it itself and its opposite at the same time? Yeah, you're probably right. I think that it's holding that, you know,

holding that simultaneously is difficult sometimes because, you know, that's what, you know, the nihilistic that you talked about, Dostoevsky, Dostoevsky, a lot of the Russian riders super nihilistic, there's no point to anything, etc. And, yeah, well, look, I'm pretty sure Dostoevsky got like a bullet

to the head, didn't he? And then he started becoming a great writer. Because the brilliant thing about him, from my understanding, is that he made the evil characters powerful. Like, we want the villain in most things to be easy to beat

so clear. And it's, I think, one of the challenges with the Harry Potter is that Voldemort could have been more malevolent to a certain extent. And I think that that is the reality is that the story is that

Harry Potter has a bit of that in him and that's what makes it a complicated story is that we have the evil within us the capability of great evil and we have the capability of great good and each day we have to make that decision. I think I'm a little bit

more maybe optimistic that the point is to find the point and to find a way to bring community together to leave a legacy for others the way people have left a legacy for you and you can ignore that to a certain extent like I didn't grow up with a lot of family recipes didn't grow up with a lot of tales from the past

but once you start to chase that there's almost a meaning to be found in knowing that other people conquered great atrocities for you to be here today, and that your job is to, if you have the opportunity, if you have any hypothetical, I hate the word privilege, but if you have any of that, your goal is to go and spread that wealth, that benefit to others. And that's why I don't like the term white privilege, I don't buy it, because my grandmother, for whatever privilege, my non-biological grandmother, whatever privilege she had, she gave the benefits she had to my mother and put her in a better

position. And so I don't think privilege is something that's just intrinsic to the person. I think it can be spread. And if you're selfish with your benefits, with your advantages in life, then you are turning to stone. And I think that that's partly what the idea of Medusa is, is that a person who doesn't want to see the people around them grow and benefit and develop is turning the people around them to stone because you're not encouraging them. If they have an idea, you shoot it down. You're really limiting the people in your circle. But when you go, I have this great advantage and I want to open the door for

other people. And it's the part about Mr. Rogan, I think that he keeps so quiet because he's a humble person, but he flies his guests out and he gives them first class. And he makes sure that they're taking care of and make sure that they have a good experience. I've heard

stories from people in other podcasts talk about how he's bought in that he's taking them hunting and bought them a freezer to store elk meat in. And that he bought more property for them so they could do that type of stuff like he's a very generous person but he does not predicate it because then it wouldn't come across the right way to listeners but knowing that there's a behind the scenes of a human being that's generous that's kind that gets an advantage and lifts other people up it's inspirational to us it's what all of the best hero archetypes do is when at the end of the movie when harry potter gets the all-powerful wand and he snaps it in half and throws into the water that's what great people do and there is no big development on the gifts that they sort of leave society behind. There's sort of a secret element that you have to go find that for yourself. You have to go find that advantage and break it and give it back to the people in the future

rather than holding on to it and becoming selfish and trying to gain material goods. But going back, you said people were mad about the video of you and the dog climbing, which is sort of, to me, you're reminding us. of something, which is why I think I made a comment on that post. You're reminding us of where we come from. There is a certain element of human beings where now we live in such developed societies. It's hard for us to imagine facing that type of adversity. But dogs have been on that road with us for a very, very, very long time. And all dogs come from wolves. And we've had a relationship built over time. That and a few other things that we've developed with cats,

we've developed with some cattle, and we've brought in these species on a journey with us. And I think that it's admirable to disagree with everybody who made maybe a negative comment. I think it's admirable for people like yourself to remind us of that, to remind us of where we come from, the meaning that, because it was awe-inspiring to me, and I'd be interested in your thoughts on awe, to see someone do that, to see someone do what so few people are willing to do. I'm interested in eventually doing an ultramarathon because there's something where at one point in time we said a human being can only run this far. And then people like David Goggins and Cameron Haynes have really said, no, no, no, watch me do something crazy. And it reminds us

of the capabilities of our bodies, but also the role our mind plays in how we develop. And I'm just interested in what that journey has been like to develop mental toughness, to develop a sense of clarity, but also to share what you see with the world and what you hope humanity could reach. Yeah, you know, you talked about when you mentioned the ultramarathon, I think last time you said that you wanted to kind of do it to show people it was possible. Like, you know, you don't need to be David Goggins to run an ultramarathon. And that's kind of, I think without realizing, that's kind of probably the category that I would pull myself into is like, I am not David Goggins, I'm not, you know, some sort of mountaineer, extraordinary that's doing

like the most crazy stuff from climbing Everest or anything like that. And I don't necessarily want to be, to be honest, right? I want to be who I am. And this is actually the second time in two days that someone said, well, that's awe-inspiring or, you know, they, he's talking yesterday to a friend. And he also said the same thing. He's like, well, that's kind of part of your brand is like there's a sense of inspiration. And it's funny, I don't necessarily see that in myself because I don't, I'm not doing what I'm doing for someone else to inspire or motivate or do anything like that. A large part of what I'm, what I do in the back country with my dog is just because I want to give him the best life and I owe it to him. Like, frankly, he didn't choose

to be in my life, in my family. So I kind of owe it to him to give him the best possible life I possibly can put aside some of my own wants and needs to go and do more extreme stuff. in service of giving him a sense of engagement and safety. Sorry, not safety, fun and motivation, all that kind of stuff. And it's funny, people were like, oh, you should put shoes on the dog because there's rocks and stuff like that. I'm like, dude, that dog's been out like minus 15 degrees Celsius and like he doesn't care. Like he does not, other than heat right now, obviously, it's a big, you know, it's a big heat wave. So we're not, he's inside for the most part.

Um, but like, I'd say 95% percent, 98% of the year, he's, he's good to go. Like, whether it's the coldest, coldest, cold, whether it's, um, you know, ice, snow, rock, scree, whatever it is. He is just, he's set, right? Do you think that's the danger of too much empathy? I do, because frankly, you're telling me, I need, you know, let's say you're saying, oh, you should put, you should put shoes on the dog, poor dog, he must feel so much pain. And yet his body language, his demeanor, his tail was wagging, he's jumping up on me, he's licking my face, he's like whining at the summit because, so on that particular hike,

he, um, when he was scrambling on the rock, he, uh, he filed one of his nails down, right? Because he was kind of, um, yeah, well, yeah, like, like, yeah, gripping, right? So he filed one of his chipped nails down to the quick and he was, he was bleeding from that nail for like 10 hours. and I was like, okay, we've got to go home and I think it's not bleeding profusely but the nails, you know, the quick kind of, it's like a wound, right? Like I scratch my knee and also

bleeding for the next 10 hours. I was like, okay, is he in pain? I was so hypersensitive to it. Honestly, like he wasn't at first summit. He wanted to do the entire traverse. He spent the next six to seven hours just like running around the mountain. He was like so happy.

Obviously, I patched him up. I put a boot on him and all that kind of stuff. But, like, people don't, you don't see that when you have social media. All you see is through your own lens, a snapshot of someone else's life without realizing that probably there's some consideration there, probably there's stuff that you don't know. And you're looking at that dogs through an anthropomorphic lens where you go, oh, maybe you should put it in a little pram and put a little hat on it and all that kind of stuff. Dude, this is an animal, you know, like he is not your child. he is an animal and to be honest

he weighs 110 pounds he has teeth this big like he could probably kill me if he wanted to and that's the thing that's the weirdest trippy part about like having a German shepherd like that is like you kind of go

this animal co-exist with me in my space and every night he goes to sleep and he helps me protect the house or whatever he does just chills out in the house and I feed him

and he could probably end my life but he chooses not to like we're kind of in this symbiotic relationship it's it's such a cool thing it's very different to we have two cats in australia um one was passed away unfortunately but you know one still was my family and it's such a different vibe like with cats it's it's kind of like a little bit more relaxing and mellow and like less codependent you know it's like less about teamwork and more about just cohabitation you're just friends your friends close friends living together and the cat comes sits in your lap and you give pets and it's really nice. One's a pack animal.

Totally. Totally. And like the dog is just like, you are my everything kind of thing. So I don't know where we're going with that. I think we're talking about awe. You asked me about awe and inspiration and motivation. I think where we need to be careful of setting up false idols.

But what I like is I've always liked intermediates. This sounds like a weird expression. I love intermediary idols. whereby you kind of go, okay, if like I've never liked like aspiring towards like probably post, I would say post high school where I looked up to like Arnie and all those kinds of folks, at a certain point I kind of went, no, those aren't the people that I should be looking up to. I should be looking up to people who are average everyday people but do extraordinary things that might be aligned to the things that I love, right? So as opposed to

looking up to, you know, a classical pianist who, like, literally spends 10 hours a day on the piano or, you know, an athlete who all they do is they train three times a day, sleep, eat, that's it. Maybe it's actually a little bit more realistic to look up to, you know, yourself who's going to train, who juggles a day-to-day career and is going to run, you know, an ultramarathon. That, to me, is more inspirational because to me, you have to over-go. come more, as opposed to Chris Hemsworth, who has a private chef, personal trainer, et cetera. Now, I'm not taking away from the hard work that these folks do. These folks put in the work.

But there's something around like, well, if you're not in that particular area, sometimes it can be demotivational for me. I don't know whether you ever get that. Like, I kind of feel like sometimes when you aim too high at some of these folks, you kind of go, I'll never be like that. And it actually detracts my level of motivation. as opposed to uplifts it. Yeah, I think that that is very common.

I think it's just, for me, I guess, I just admire people who find something and play it out to its fullest, whatever that might look like. And so for David Dawkins, I agree. I don't think I could ever do that because he doesn't have a day-to-day job. Cameron Haynes is a very interesting cat because he does have a normal nine-to-five job, and he still runs ultra-marathons, which, again, makes him more relatable.

And then he writes a book and talks about, his book's called Endurr, and he talks about how there's this feeling that, like, one day you're going to sail off into the sunset. But really, his life is all about every day you need to commit yourself to, he does like at least 10K every single day. And then he's always working, and then he trains at night, and he's always pushing himself. And it's like that every day, every week, every year, until he dies. and then that's where meaning is to be found in extrapolating it outwards where so many people want a six week to have rock hard abs or in this year you're going to hop on weight watchers or bodybuilders.com and get to an end point. But the secret is there's no end point. It's constant pushing yourself, whether it's in jujitsu, like from everything that I've heard about

it, it's a lifelong endeavor. You're never going to master it. And that is, that way for literally everything. There is no thing where you can dedicate yourself to and feel like you're the expert. You can lead and be better than other people, but expert is unattainable and a never-ending kind of trajectory. And it's part of the thing I think is tragic about academics is because there's an ego that you get when you're a PhD in biology. Or like, you're very advanced and you start to go like, well, it's normal people. Don't get what I get. And then I think that there is a condescending element towards looking at physical activity as if it's less than. And I think it's something that I just see so many within the academic community struggle with, which is, oh, that's nice.

But, like, I actually understand how, like, nuclei work. And, like, most people can never. And so I'm different than they are where there's something lacking when we talk about physical exercise that there's a mental element. that there's a certain point on the runs that I do now where I'm like, I don't think I can go another kilometer. And then it's two kilometers. And I'm like, no, I've got to stop in a minute here. Like, I just need a break.

And then I keep going. And then it's like, wait, I said 20 minutes ago that I was going to stop. And now I'm starting to feel a little more relaxed. And I'll just keep going until that comes up again. And then I'm home and I'm like, that feeling didn't come back. And there's this like, oh, I thought I was capable of this. Just like you were saying, we put these mental limitations on ourselves. And the thing I just find fascinating about doing this podcast, the reason that I'm so excited to do it all the time, is because people do that all the time, and we never, ever stop and go, holy, like, you're an ocean pollution expert, and you're the person who discovered killer whales are the most contaminated, and, like, how did you do that?

And why did you dedicate yourself to this? And you've been doing this for 30 years, and you're still excited, and you still believe we could fix this great planet that we have here. and you haven't lost hope, even though when I read your research, I feel empty inside and go, oh, we're on the wrong track and you still believe in us. And, like, how do you do that? Is that a challenge? And people, I think, are far more interesting, just to your point of, like, you can listen to people and find them really interesting because so many people have overcome things. But we forget to pause and go, like, hey, you know what? Maybe this wasn't a big deal to you, but it meant a lot to me to see that. And when I get to see your posts on, on Instagram,

about the hikes you go, it's like, yeah, I can go get out. after it today too or I need to because he already has and that's why I like jocco is because every day he posts an image of his time and it's 4.30 in the morning and he's getting after it and he talks about earning the sunrise and it's like if he can do that I can go for my run today I can find that time and so many people I talk to talk about how they don't have enough time in their day and yet there's people like yourself reaching incredible heights there are people who are pushing themselves in so many different ways and we forget to maybe admire them and we're in a weird time where we're all so equal that we forget that there are people that are

extraordinary in certain regards. They're not perfect, but they set an example of like, hey, if you dedicate yourself to whatever it is, you could reach that too. And that would be so meaningful to everybody else to admire and humble ourselves to. The other thing that I think about you that was admirable when we did our phone call was

you talked about why you moved here. And you made it very clear that it had nothing to do with you. Can you tell us about that, about your partner, about how you two met and sort of that journey? Yeah, and I just want to wrap one thing before I answer that question, something that I just think needs to be said around the, it's actually answering your previous question around like, why, you know, why do you do these things and why do you take? I think there is, whether it's martial arts is really good for that, and you talk about expertise, et cetera, and same thing with the mountains. Not only is there a perspective piece, but there's an element of, like, humbleness. You have to have humility in these things. Like, even when you're a black belt, you know, I've got do jiu-jitsu.

I used to do Korean karate, I have my black belt. Like, you know, it's funny because when you get your black belt, you basically are just a white belt at a black belt level, right? Because there's, you're just a small fish and a bigger pond now. And I think, you know, those academics or those individuals who we can, you know, go through our lives and we forget what it's like to have to relearn things and to learn new things because we spend so much of our lives striving for competence. Think about like the school system, uni work, like it's all geared towards you being excellent and you being competent. And then you kind of go, well, why would you ever put yourself in a position where you

feel incompetent again? So that's why I think that's what I would say is probably one of the key benefits of things like martial arts, et cetera, is like, to me, what it does is it, it regrounds you because you're constantly having to learn. It takes away the edge of that hubris, and it makes you kind of go, okay, no, I'm, no, I'm actually not as good as I think I am, like, because I'm getting destroyed here by people who have been doing this for far longer than I am, right? So, sorry, that was just an aside. A very important aside. yeah so why do we come here so my partner she is uh she is hoping or she we came here basically because she so that's her lifelong dream she wants to be an actress um don't know why she wants to be an

actress she has wanted to be an actress she was like five years old right and so you know she's been pursuing that and striving for that uh in australia and so at a certain point about three four years ago now, we kind of went, okay, the Australian market is very geared towards a certain type of person with a certain type of look. She doesn't have that kind of neighbor's home and away vibe, right? Do you know what those are? There's kind of the days of our lives kind of version of of Australia. So these soap operas. So that's some of the big stuff that's feeling. She doesn't have that look. Okay. So why not, why not just leave everything behind and, you know, you know, and put your money where your mouth is.

Because the last thing I would want for her is to get to a point in her life where she feels like, well, because we settled down, because we had kids or waterhouse or whatever, I was never able to fulfill my lifelong passion and my dream. It's because of this thing, right? So basically, we did a bit of me. So when the global financial crisis hit, we moved around a couple of times and a couple of cities because of my role. And so I said, well, you know, let's do a given time. hey, why don't we move to Vancouver? It's the Hollywood of the North. So let's do that, right? And she was

quite happy with that. And so, yeah, so that's why we came here. So you were willing to, like, it sounds like you moved around in Australia for your career benefit. Yeah. But you moved continents to support your partner in her endeavor. Can you tell us about how you two met in sort of that journey. Yeah, so we met 10 years ago. We had some mutual friends that we met through and, yeah, we just started talking as well on Facebook and like, right, this was before Tinder and all that kind of stuff. Before that was a thing that ruined the dating world. So, yeah, we met through mutual friends. We started talking on Facebook and I just felt like there was something there that I could kind of connect to. And then we went on a coffee date at the

the beach and she she tells this like story to friends and stuff around like I think for whatever reason the bar was clearly set super low because I got her a chai latte and then through the conversation she clearly found me so riveting that she didn't hadn't drunk her her charlotte got cold and so I said I offered to basically buy her a new chai latte a hot chile latte and that was for some reason the bar that she said she went oh my god this person is you know wow Prince Charming and then another subsequent date I think we had gone to

see a movie it was Ted if you're interested so we'd go and see Ted and then she didn't know how to get home from that particular movie theater so I drove her basically she was in her car I was in my car and I kind of drove her

to the point where she knew where the roads were and all that kind of stuff and she was like okay I got it from here I don't know why those things sometimes it's the smallest things Because, like, to me, that is really not a big deal kind of thing. But for whatever reason, that ensnared her and allowed me to trap her for the last to the next 10 years of her life in a monotonous relationship.

Chivalry. Sure. It's not dead. Yeah. Yeah. Where does that come from? And why do you think it's something that the term so rarely used? We talk about equality.

Of course, a good thing. But there's something less admirable, as you were kind of describing about Tinder, about the process of dating today, about the example you can said about the warmth you can provide another person, the sort of kind gestures that can mean so much holding a door for a person. Now, there's arguments where you can hold your own goddamn door. There's this weird feeling that people are so independent today that holding a door doesn't mean anything. grabbing the extra chai latte doesn't mean anything and yet there's something warm about it there's something kind and caring and there's some sort of generosity that's within that that means a lot to a person and it seems like we're maybe forgetting that our relationships are transactional uh we don't dive deep or we don't think that those little

things matter so firstly around that argument of like yeah well you can hold your own door and you can do this and you're an independent person and blah, blah, it's like, well, yeah, but then what's the point of having a relationship? What's the point of being with someone, you know? Because I do think a relationship is an accumulation of small, meaningful, nice acts that show respect and admiration and love and all that kind of stuff. Like, you know, I don't really know what it would take to, what kind of, I suppose, action or act would take for someone who doesn't believe in shiver.

for them to be a believer, would it have to be like I buy you a yacht or a diamond ring or an iPhone? Like, what would it have to, what would it take for you to kind of go, okay, that was a really nice gesture that I couldn't do for myself. Because frankly, like, you can do it all, really.

Like, you don't need to be in a relationship. You probably, you know, might help you from a psychological perspective, right? And all that kind of stuff. But, you know, I'm sure that there are plenty of people you brought up priests before who are celibate. some who aren't, some who obviously are, right?

And, you know, they presumably go their whole lives dedicated towards this, you know, Buddhist monks or whatever it is, right? So it's a silly argument to be made. I think, like, the idea of doing small, nice deeds, chivalrous deeds, whether it's holding a door, getting a coffee for someone, et cetera, it's almost, once again, it's become polarized. It's like either you do nothing because I'm an independent person

or the expectation is, and I've had these dates before, 10 years ago, is like, I don't even bring my wallet because my expectation is that you are getting all of this kind of thing. And, you know, I can tell you right now, like, I would run equally as fast in the opposite direction on both spectrums of that, right? To me, I think a relationship is, you know, it needs to be based on respect, trust, humility, care, empathy. There's a whole bunch of stuff right in there, like, you know, clarity, transparency, all that. Anyway. And your question was around, you know, at Tinder, why has that really kind of impacted? I think you answered your own question. Like, it's the transactional nature of relationships now. We are, I feel like we've entered into a stage in, in relationship or dating life where what I see talking to some of my female friends or some of my single friends, let's say, don't have to necessarily be female, is. um there's something better the grass is greener you know like it's like okay i'm going on a tinder date with you but i'm also going on a tinder date with five other people and i'm trying to play the odds

which one's the best one or you have a quality that i don't necessarily like and so therefore i'm just gonna yeah don't worry about it like it's too hard you know you talked about suffering relationships take hard workers you know you've been in a relationship for six years right I've been with my partner for 10 years, it is not, it's not easy to be in relationship. Grass is greener where you order it. Exactly, right? So we have this expectation. Maybe it's because of, you know, the instant gratification kind of society where like everything's like instant.

It's like, actually, no, you're going to firstly have to work for stuff. In a relationship, you're going to have ups and downs. And you can't continue that mentality of like, I remember in high school, like, some people had that idea of the first time you have a fight with your girlfriend, it's like, well, I guess it's too hard. I guess we should just break up. It's very dramatic. It's very, I would say it's very high school, right?

And that's fine, by the way. If you just want to sleep around and if you just want to, you know, experiment with a whole bunch of people, go for your life, son. But you're going to ask yourself, like, firstly, if you're a guy, a lot of guys have the mentality of, I used to be friends with these folks is like, oh, you know, I'll just be a player in my early 20s and then when I'm 30 I'll settle down. It's like, firstly, no, I don't think it works like that because I don't think you can get to 30 and all of a sudden you find some, you know, some princess that you've, whether you want to rescue that meets meets all

your insane criteria. So firstly, impossible from a male perspective. And from a female perspective also, you think about that kind of hookup culture. I think, Cup culture is actually worse for women than it is for men, because realistically, women are, um, they carry most of the risk of, of relationships, you know? Like, they're the ones that get pregnant, right? They're the ones that have kids. Like, a lot of the, the bad stuff, I feel like, is held by the, by women. And like, actually, guys can do whatever, whatever they want kind of thing. So I don't know whether you can play, play the game, uh, the same way that guys play it, if you're a woman.

And I also think that what it does is also maybe tricks us psychologically in both genders, I would say, genders, sexes, I don't know, I don't know what we call them anymore, whether you're a guy or a girl or a, you know, or are they slash them, non-binary, I think what, you know, we're still, we're hardwired the way we're hardwired. And I'm not saying we, you know, we can't act outside of that. But what that typically means is, okay, well, if you're the type of. Like me, as an example, I've always been the type of person that favors relationships over casual kind of hookups.

So even when I wasn't with my partner, it would just not be very meaningful. Like, you know, kind of hooking up with random people was just not a meaningful thing. I just didn't feel anything. So you've got to be honest with yourself. Is this something that you're doing because, you know, you're a liberated woman or a liberated man and you're just, you know, enjoying your life? Or is there something that actually kind of does something for you, you know, on an emotional level or spiritual level?

Yeah, there's also a danger to being willing to do the act without ever being comfortable talking about it, like an immaturity in that we, like, the hookup culture is like we hook up and then we both flee the other direction as fast as possible and never speak again. And there's something really, I think, likely, cyclical. logically damaging about having that view and then you can't develop like a philosophy of how to be in a relationship and connect with another person and hear their needs and and humble yourself and get out of your own way if all you've ever had is things get hard I leave or we start to have a

complicated conversation and I don't want that so I get out so ingrained in that pattern that you don't know how to change or develop that differently. The other question I had was around this men are somewhat different and it's something I've seen as a pattern that I hate and I just wanted to see if you've seen it or if you have any thoughts on it, which is there is an effort period for most men in the early six months. Some people call it the honeymoon period. A lot of men take their foot off the gas, start watching golf, start sleeping, start not being the person they sold themselves as later in the relationship where I think it's a huge betrayal. because you pitched, we're going to go on dates, we're going to see movies, we're going to go for long drives, talk, have time together, and then there comes this point where it's like,

well, I got you. Like a fishing adventure and I caught you, so now you lose and now look at me, I'm a sloth, like I don't do anything. Have you seen that? Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, all the time. I don't understand why you would misrepresent yourself

as something that you're not. I feel like you're kicking the hand down the road, you know, where you kind of go, if that's the real you and you just like sports and, you know, and just hanging out with your friends and watching TV, I'm sure that the planet has however many billion people. I'm sure that there's someone out there for you who probably likes to, you know, go shopping and hang out with her girlfriends. And while you're doing the golf, she'll be going shopping and you'll both never see each other and that would be the best relationship you have been, right?

So, like, to me, I don't think it really pays off on a long-term basis. And it's the same thing as kicking the can down the road in terms of conversations like kids and relationship status and all that. For me, I think communication is the thing that we need to base all of our relationships on transparency, dependability, communication, trust. I, to me, right, I would look at that and I would go, okay, if you cannot have a conversation about the real you with the person that you're with, is that, is that really a, is that really a meaningful conversation?

Are that really the conversation, the, sorry, the relationship that you want to be in kind of thing? So it's unfair to the person that you're with and it's probably also unfair to yourself. So ask yourself at that point, like, are you not showing your true? self. Why? You know, is it because of some anxiety that you don't feel lovable? Is it because of something else? Is it because of, you know, what is the reason why you're prolonging, showing that thing? Because it's not good enough just to say, well, I got this person. I was just kind of operating on instinct. He could probably just stay on Tinder at that point. Yeah. Absolutely.

Can you tell people how they can connect with your coaching services, maybe on Instagram, the social media platforms that you're on. Sure. So I can be found on Instagram or at your, as in the word your, one, the number one up coach. So your one up coach. I'm on LinkedIn, Ilya Posnack. And then... How do you spell that?

Yeah, that's a good question. So it's I-L-I-A. And then my last name is P-O-Z-N-A-K. So it's a bit of a doozy, but, you know. not it's not my fault i'm foreigner and do you have a website uh in the works in the works yeah yeah so instagram probably be the best place for now and then our website is uh shortly forthcoming and youtube channel i know i know you i know you're not a crazy hype on it but i'm pretty hype on it so i don't know it's like the same thing like if you just google ilia posnac youtube it will probably

be the same one if you want to follow in my my kind of the hiking adventures ilias underscore odyssey would be the place to do it, and then you can see all the crazy stuff with the dog and Tammy and you're on for being irresponsible. Yeah, no, those are so cool. I disagree with those people vehemently. It has been such a blast to be able to chat with you. I think you have incredible insights on so many different topics.

I think that the field of psychology is so fascinating because it does impact us in so many different ways and people who are willing to share their insights and try and help people move in a better direction. are really important in our society, especially when we're trying to go through, people have called it a culture war, like we're struggling to try and figure out what direction we should go. And I think that people like yourself help us kind of ground the conversation in what human

beings are meant to do, what we're sort of designed biologically, socially, emotionally, psychologically, and kind of help us move in the right direction. I find your work around the hikes you do really inspirational, and they remind us that we, there's so much more to human beings than meets the eye and that we should try and figure out what that is for us and so it's been such a blast to chat with you and we've just done about three hours and 15 minutes. Jeez, we went a lot of places.

Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate that.