Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Jaemin Frazer on finding success through self-mastery

Episode Date: July 26, 2020

Jaemin Frazer is the founder of The Insecurity Project and widely regarded as one of Australia's best life coaches. He's also a TEDx speaker and author, having just launched his new book ‘Unhindered’, which gives you the seven essential steps to eliminate your underlying insecurities that have and will continue to hinder your success if you don’t remove them.  Imagine how good your life will be once the hidden mental handbrakes of your insecurities are removed and you can achieve your ideal lifestyle by being in the right state, managing your energy and being the person you need to be so that you can let it happen through your rituals rather than having to continually push to make it happen through the slog of dogged discipline.   To whet your appetite on the seven essential steps to removing your insecurities and becoming unhindered, Jaemin goes through them in this awesome conversation today. So if you’re serious about achieving sustainable success in any area of your life, then eliminating any deep rooted subconscious insecurities and negative self talk is going to be mission critical. So let me challenge you to start on this foundational self help work, because as I always say, it’s the start that stops most people. So to get started on your self, just jump on our website knowhowproperty.com.au, hit the ‘Get In Touch’ button, fill in your details and put Unhindered in the comments section, or just email me direct at [e-mail] with Unhindered in the subject line and add a sentence on what you would do in your life if you were truly unhindered - and Jaemin has kindly offered complimentary copies of his new book for the best responses. In the meantime, get ready to soak in a wealth of wisdom as we enjoy this great chat with Jaemin Frazer. Get yourself a copy of Unhindered or Jaemin's other books at  jaeminfrazer.com/jaeminbooks. Jaemin's book recommendation: The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz Get Invested is the podcast dedicated to time poor professionals who want to work less and live more. Join Bushy Martin, one of Australia’s top 10 property specialists, as he and his influential guests share know-how on the ways investing in property can unlock the life you always dreamed about and secure your financial future. Remember to subscribe on your favourite podcast player, and if you're enjoying the show please leave us a review. Find out more about Get Invested here https://bushymartin.com.au/get-invested-podcast/  Want to connect with Bushy? Get in touch here https://bushymartin.com.au/contact/  This show is produced by Apiro Media - http://apiropodcasts.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I think people suffer greatly and unnecessarily around unresolved insecurity. So this feels like the problem that I was born to solve and it's something that I do with my whole heart and soul. So I think it's a global problem as you mentioned and is the biggest inhibitor of performance not only in business but in life in general. So it's a very important subject and it demands a clear, intelligent, and complete solution. Welcome to the Get Invested Podcast, where we share great conversations with experts from all walks of life to uncover their secret know-how on where they invest their time, their skills, and their money, and the benefits that this has created.

You see, the truth is that everyone invests. Every minute of every day, we're investing our time, our skills, our energy, and our money in something. Some of us are investing consciously, some unconsciously, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad, sometimes for no impact. Get Invested will help you to start living by design, not by default. I'm going to help you to make it happen, not let it happen. You'll hear the top tips on how you can live with conscious intent

so that you can live more, work less, and leave a living legacy by investing now. Listen to the show to discover the top tips on how to get started, make the most of your investment journey, and ultimately, to be living your dream, not someone else's. More episodes can be found on iTunes or at bussymartin.com.au forward slash getinvested. Thanks for listening, and now, let's get invested. Hi, Freedom Fighters. If you could solve your biggest problem in life, what would it be? More time, more money, a better job, better health, better relationships?

How much of your time, energy and money are you investing in trying to solve this? I'm betting that you focus on something external. But what if these problems are just symptoms of a deeper problem? What if our biggest problem is internal, between our ears? and how we think and feel, how we think and feel about ourselves, and how we think about and see the world, the stories in our head that we've created about the world, in other words, what we believe. I'm talking here about our insecurity, our fear of our own inadequacy. But Bushy, I'm not secure, that's not me, I hear you say. I mean, just look at me, I've got a great partner and kids, I

work hard and a good job. I'm respected for my work and who I am. I live in a nice house. I drive a nice car. I make good money. I'm not insecure. Really, come on. But what about that little voice in your head, that little nagging whisper that keeps telling you that you're not really happy and content with your life? My bet is that you've often feeling that you haven't achieved enough, that little negative Nelly or Neville that keeps saying you're not successful enough, you're not good looking enough, you're not skinny enough,

you're not fit enough, you're not fast enough, you're not rich enough, you're just not good enough. And let me ask you these questions. Do you worry about what other people think? Do you worry about how you look? Do you always say exactly what you think

or what people expect to hear? Are you comfortable disagreeing with others? Do you seek or need the recognition of others? Do you compare yourself with others? Do you find yourself criticising others and yourself? Do you ever envy others or feel jealous? Are you a perfectionist? Maybe a control freak?

If you reluctantly said yes to any of these, then I hate to break it to you, but you're harbouring insecurity. And the good news is that you're not alone. We're all insecure about some things at some time or another, whether we want to admit that or not. And it's actually okay to feel insecure. And it's not your fault that you haven't identified it or solved your insecurity problems. Why?

Because there's just so much working against us today that feeds our insecurity. Governments and the media are constantly peddling and instilling fear. Social media often focuses on spreading fear. And advertising promotes perfect images and flaunts fear. using constant comparison to emphasise our inadequacy with whatever they're trying to sell. And even if we're aware of our insecurity, which is disguised in hundreds of symptoms, most of us don't even think we can fix it. Most messaging in this area seems to be about managing, masking or medicating insecurity

in all of its insidious forms. There's an industry that's grown up of psychiatrists, counsellors and a host of others that is dancing around the subject without ever solving it. There's just so much working against us to solve our insecurities. It's why many of us are constantly feeling inadequate. We quietly fear that someone's going to find out that we're not good enough, we're not smart enough, we're not pretty enough, we're not strong enough. We're pretenders. We haven't earned it, so we don't deserve it.

But here's the interesting thing. Today's guests help us to see that what we're really saying to ourselves when we think and feel this way, is we're actually afraid of our own opinion of ourselves. What we're saying is that in our mind, we're inadequate. We have a deep down opinion of ourself that there's something wrong with us, something missing, something undeserving, something unworthy, and that opinion has gone unchecked and unchallenged. And in the word of today's guest, now we're continuously trying to do our best work in the world while this opinion is still bubbling away in the background of our subconscious, silently sabotaging all of our best efforts.

This opinion is still in the back of our head. This opinion quietly threatens us. this opinion questions us with are you really as good as you say you are are you going to be able to keep this up are you good enough for this and in a strange way your inner voice is trying to protect you so you don't make a fool of yourself but until you stop blaming other things acknowledge your insecurity and examine yourself on that level you're never going to fix it and i know this because I've been there and I've really struggled with insecurity although for many years I didn't even recognize or realize that this is what it was as the base of my problems. You see I spent

the first half of my life absolutely driven by my insecurities. I was born with a hair lip and I was very young when I developed chronic asthma and because we moved towns a lot with dad's work I ended up two years younger and a foot shorter than everyone else in my class. So I always felt like a sickly, punk-chested, short-arse runt of an outsider. So the way I learnt to cope and to prove myself and gain the acceptance and recognition that I craved was just to work way harder than everyone else. Even in high school I was regularly up at 5 o'clock in the morning studying and I'd study into the night and through my weekends just to ensure I got good grades. I was an absolute nerd. I convinced myself that I needed to be

a hard-working perfectionist to get ahead. And this continued into my architecture studies at uni. For the last two years during my honours degree, I survived on an average of four hours sleep a night, and there were periods of three to four days when I wouldn't sleep at all. I was just propped up on no-dose pills. I was determined to get good grades at all costs. And the better I did, the better I needed to do, so the harder I worked. I became a victim of my own expectations of my success and I was constantly stressed as I just worked harder and longer. And this carried over into my work life. And I was in a gut-busting hurry to become a world-renowned, award-winning architect. By then, I was working seven days a week, 14 hours a day, and I did this for years

on end. And for a while my undiagnosed insecurities resulted in considerable outward success. But on the inside, it was killing me and my insecurity was unquenchable, driving me above and beyond my limits. I wasn't aware of it and my insecurity just was limitless. And what a miserable bastard I became as a result. Everything in my life had to be perfect. I became hypercritical of myself and others. I was a control freak of the highest order and architecture was the perfect place to hone my perfectionism and my workaholism to the extreme. I'm sure it's the reason why architects have the highest divorce rate amongst any of the professions. I'd mistakenly convinced myself that anything in life could be solved

and success could be gained by just working harder and then in my early 30s I had my early life crisis as opposed to my midlife crisis and I suffered what we used to call a nervous breakdown now I know and now joke about it because I always had to be the first and I like to get these things out of the way early but sadly I lost everything my marriage my career my business my wealth I ended up burnt out, broke and broken And I know now that all of this resulted from my lack of self-worth And my desperate need to prove myself to myself and others By working harder than anyone else

It wasn't until I stood back and had a really good look at myself And got some professional help with how I think And the misguided stories that I'd been telling myself And really started questioning my inherent flaws before things started to change. I came to realise that my insecurity meant that I had an incredible need for acceptance. I needed others to say I'm alright so that perhaps I could convince myself that I am alright. This also meant that I took rejection really hard,

which means I was always trying to avoid confrontation, to become a pleaser. So, like a chameleon, I changed colour to suit the audience and the surroundings. I was everyone's friend, but I ended up losing myself in the process and compromising who I really was. I became so busy trying to please everyone else that I forgot who I am and what was really important to me. And at the bottom of all of this, I was insecure. This was a really tough but an important awakening and a big lesson for me.

What about you? What deep-seated insecurities are you harbouring? Chances are you're not even aware of them. But if you're struggling in any area of your life, chances are that some form of insecurity is at the bottom of it. So here's a rub. The quality of the questions you start asking yourself, and the level that you challenge your habitual subliminal thinking, will determine your ability to start overcoming these deeply entrenched, subtle, yet very significant, tightly held insecurities.

And here's the really good news that our guest shares with us today, that we can actually solve and eliminate these silent insecurity saboteurs. For many years now, I've been under the false impression that you just need to accept your insecurities and try and constantly work on them, that they'll never go away until I discover today's guest, Jamin Fraser. Jamin's an author, a TEDx speaker and a life coach. He's the founder of the Insecurity Project and he specialises in helping you and other ambitious people experience deep change so that you're able to overcome your invisible internal limitations

and finally enjoy the life you desire. He's widely recognised as one of Australia's leading life coaches and he's one of the trusted voices globally in dealing with personal insecurity. He's also the voice behind the popular One Minute Coach radio segment featured on stations all around Australia and he's the author of the awesome book Elegantly Simple Solutions to Complex People Problems as well as his soon-to-be-released book Unhindered

that I'll talk more about shortly. jayman shows us that all we need is the right information to alter how we see ourselves and the world and then it's possible to consistently show up at our best when it matters most and whether we acknowledge it or not we also have this deep down belief that we all have this magic inside of us and if we're given the right opportunity in the right situation we could deliver greatness and wow people and really make a difference in the world but most of us never show up at our best when it matters most and all of this because of our insecurities so the good news is that jayman promises us that it's possible to solve our insecurity issues not just ignore

them and try and manage them he shows us how we can fix our insecurities so that the stuff that's inside of us can start to illuminate the world and the dreams we have inside us can be achieved. For some time now, I've been talking about my realisation that sustainable success is only achieved at the intersection of self, health and wealth. And you need all three harmonising in concert to enjoy any enduring success. Ignore any one of them in this success triangle and at some point your house of cards will collapse. Many people chase wealth from the form of work, career, business or investments like I did and ignore their self and their wealth. Others will focus on their health, how they breathe, sleep, eat, exercise, thinking

that their wealth is just going to look after itself or they ignore their wealth because their self has a poor relationship with money so they never achieve or maintain their goals. very few spend much time focusing on their self. And in my experience, sustainable success is all built on the foundation of self. Self is about what's between our ears, about how we think, our self-beliefs, our self-esteem, our self-worth, our self-talk, our mindset, our outlook, our attitudes, and our expectations. In other words, the stories that we tell ourselves about how the world works

and how we interpret it. It's about our relationship with ourself. And it's all built on our level of self-esteem and self-worth, our level of subconscious adequacy or otherwise. Mastering self is the critical foundational step. It's the keystone. Ignore this and you'll never achieve any form of sustainable success in whichever way you choose to define it.

At the end of the day, it's about becoming aware of your perceptions and self-thinking and then changing your own self-story and self-talk if it's not working for you. And to share a good example, I've just had a revelation that has absolutely changed my thinking. In preparing for my interviews with guests, I normally stalk them by reading their books, blogs, watching their videos and listening to their past podcasts so that I understand and appreciate who I'm talking to and can then frame the narrative of my conversation in a way that's going to bring out the best

in the guest for your benefit. Now, while doing this for this week's episode, I've been reading Jamin's first book, Elegantly Simple Solutions to Complex People Problems, and I had a series of light bulb moments. That sustainable success is about our mind state, not our work rate. While I sort of vaguely knew this in the far recesses of my mind, I've never been smacked in the face with it. And this is the mark of really good communicators. They say things that you may know or have heard from others, but they say it in a way that really cuts through and sheds light where there was dark. Now, to share the excitement of this light bulb moment, I'm going to paraphrase and read you some relevant excerpts of Jamin's first book. So here we go. Having clear

outcomes is critical to your capacity to move forward in life. So the most important question for you to answer is always, what do I really want? If you don't know what outcomes you're looking for, then how do you know there is anything wrong with the ones you've currently got? My bet is that as soon as you get clear about what you want, you'll instinctively jump to the how question. You'll want to figure out what to do to get what you want. The problem with this strategy is that often doing's not enough. You may put a plan in place and work very hard at it, but despite your determination and persistence, you just don't seem to be able to make it. You get close, but not close enough. You hit a brick wall. It doesn't matter

how hard you work you just don't have access to that outcome and you end up with a feeling of frustration and hopelessness. Now this really resonated with me given my workaholic past but here comes the kicker. Jamie goes on. The key is to discover what actually makes your desired outcomes possible. It might be surprising to realize that more often than not it's the state You're in that determines whether or not your desired outcomes are possible. Your state is king, because it's the thing that gives you access to outcomes. This belief is based on the premise that there's no such thing as an unresourceful person, just an unresourceful state.

When you're in a resourceful mental and emotional state, you can get stuff done in an hour that might take you three days to accomplish if you're feeling flat or discouraged. Being in a great state, being in the zone, being on fire, experiencing flow or whatever you want to call it, opens up a new realm of possibilities. Outcomes are simply the fruit of possibilities made available by the state that you're in at any given time. Top sports people understand the power of state management better than most.

The difference between the world's best and a player ranked in the top 100 is not actually about skill. They all have incredibly high levels of skill. It's about their ability to access the magic when they need it. An elite player may have moments of brilliance followed by moments of madness. However, the world's best don't crumble under pressure. They are far more consistent. They can access the best of themselves under immense external pressure. If you can control your state, you can control your outcomes.

You're always in a state of some kind, but it's not always a state that will let you access the outcomes you're after. Now, there are a whole bunch of rituals or rhythms that, when applied, will have the net result of leading you into the state that will get you the outcomes you want. Having a great state, it's not random. It's unlikely that you will just wake up one day in state. because state is crafted from inputs.

If you want great outcomes, you'll need to learn how to create a great state, because when it comes to outcomes, state is king. So you need to start asking yourself a different question. When you get up in the morning and are very clear about what you want and why you want it, instead of asking what you need to do to get that, ask what you need to do to get into the right state

to get that outcome. When you're in the peak performance state for that particular outcome, the game's going to change. In a peak performance state, you'll have access to what you need to get what you really want. And this boils down to the difference between self-discipline and self-permission. Rituals are key to creating states. Rituals are the little things that we do all the time, whether intentionally or not, that affect our mental and our emotional states. They're not connected to outcomes. Disciplines, by contrast, are actions that are directly connected to the outcome we're after. I'm convinced that most people overestimate the usefulness of discipline and underestimate the power of state.

If working hard to get what you want is your best and only strategy, I guarantee the only consistent outcome you'll experience is disappointment and pain. The kind of rituals I practice are life-giving things that create a great state. Now at this point I'm going to insert some of my own personal ritual examples. My thank you gratitude mantra when I wake up in the morning that immediately puts me in a state of joy, bliss and abundance. Smile time and cuddle time with my wife and our Samoyed dogs when we get up. My first cup of coffee.

Taking our dogs for our morning walk out in nature in the fresh air. my daily 7 minute workout challenge that works every muscle in my body and gets my blood pumping and clears my mind getting motivated and inspired by a great podcast or a YouTube video listening to and playing beautiful lilting piano solos music really moves my emotions practicing and playing hockey going to the movies

enjoying a leisurely big break at our favourite cafe on Saturday mornings or chilling out and reading a great book My Kindle goes with me everywhere so I can steal quiet moments to read while I'm in transit or waiting for someone. Now paraphrasing Jamin, I don't need to discipline myself to do these things. Rather, it's about giving myself permission to go where the life is. The biggest challenge of living by state management, as opposed to just working hard through discipline and determination, is your capacity to listen to yourself and then trust yourself. Life-giving rituals that create a great state are entirely subjective though.

What's good for me may create a really poor state in you. No one else is going to suggest I go to the movies instead of doing work, let alone give me permission to do so. Often we're far too concerned about what we should be doing and what everyone else expects of us, rather than listening to our own ideas about what would give us life and open the doors to the outcomes we want. and here is jaymond's next revelation for me it's about energy management not time management when you become outcomes focused it's easy to become very conscious of how you're spending your time however effective state management is actually more about managing your energy than about managing your time energy is a far more useful resource than time could ever be

Imagine you've been given a week to get an assignment done, yet you're feeling flat and totally lacking your motivation. All that time's almost useless to you. Now think of what it would be like if you only had one hour to do something important, but you were in absolute peak state. What you could do in that hour with maximum energy is nothing short of awesome.

Hal Elrod, author of The Miracle Morning, suggests that successful people start their day very differently than the average Joe. He attributes a big part of their success to their morning rituals that spell the acronym SAVERS. And you all know how much I love acronyms. So let's break SAVERS down. S is for silence. This can be mindfulness, meditation, centeredness or prayer.

But the point is to stop and breathe. A is for affirmation. What do you need to be, sorry, who do you need to be to succeed? Start talking to yourself like you are already that person. V is for visualisation. What results would you like? Okay, go out into the future and see yourself experiencing these results so that when you get them, it won't be a surprise.

E is for exercise. The purpose is not to gain fitness or lose weight, but to increase oxygen and blood flow to your entire body including your brain. Something short and sharp like star jumps, push-ups or a quick stair climb will do the trick. R is for reading. Learn something that will add value to your life. Stop reading when you've learnt one new thing for the day. This may be after one word, a paragraph, a page or a chapter.

And finally, scribing. grab a nice pen and a clean sheet of paper and take some time to write or draw what's going on in your world every state is made up of three things firstly physiology your breathing, your posture, your exercise secondly focus your attitude, attention, energy

and thirdly language your self-talk, metaphors, conversations changing one or more of these can have a significant impact on your state. The rituals we practice need to be aimed at changing some or all of these things. So, who do you need to be? Once you're really clear about what you want and why you want it, the game-changing question is not,

what do I need to do, but who do I need to be? Another way of asking this question is, what kind of person would have access to these outcomes? It's not simply the best or most talented sports person, artist or business person that ends up on the top of the pile. Despite what most people think, the best don't always finish first. Simply doing my best isn't likely to deliver the results I'm looking for. I need to find out what kind of person gets the outcomes I'm after. The question I need to ask myself is, who do I need to be?

What kind of person makes it in this field of expertise? when most hardworking or others get very little recognition or reward. What must they believe about themselves? How do they dress, talk, walk? What's their relationship with money? What story do they live out of? If I can be that kind of person, then I can have access to the same results as they do.

The Be, Do, Have model really unpacks how this works in the real world. That's Be, Do, Have. And there are three common approaches to trying to get ahead in life as understood by this simple but powerful be, do, have model. Let's call them the victim, the worker, and the winner. The victim arranges their life in the order have, do, be. They say, when I have enough time, money, and support, then I'll do the things I've always wanted to, and then I'll be happy and successful. The problem is, I don't have yet. If I had what that person had, I'd certainly be as successful as them,

but I don't, so I'm not. The victim's always waiting for externals to change before they can move ahead in life. The worker is all about do, have, be. They say, the more I do, the more I'll have. The more I'll have, the happier I'll be. The problem is, the more I do, the more there's still to do. And the more I have, the more there is still to have.

I'm defined by what I do, so I become driven, busy and tired. The more I have, the more there is to lose, so the harder I work. Now, by now, you can tell how I used to relate strongly to the worker. We all know that the link between having more things and being happier is a real myth. so being happy never arrives. But the winner orientates their life quite differently. Be, do, have. They say, it's not what do I need to have before I can start or what work do I need to do, but who do I need to be? What kind of person would have access to the kind of outcomes I want. Then, being that kind of person, what would I be doing? When I get that right, the

having takes care of itself. Be, do, have is definitely the rarest of the three lifestyles and the most abstract. Yet it's the only one that works. It really is the winner. Wow. Now, I don't know about you, but all of these words of Jamin's, I find really insightful words of wisdom. So focusing on being in the right state, on managing my energy instead of my time, and continuously asking myself who do I need to be, getting clarity on these three principles, they've absolutely flipped my lid. And while I've sort of touched on them in the past, now I'm really excited about how these ways of thinking are going to turbocharge my future. And here's some more good news. Jamin has just launched his

new book, Unhindered, that gives you the seven essential steps to eliminate your underlying insecurities that have and will continue to hinder your success if you don't remove them. Imagine how good your life will be once the hidden mental handbrakes of your insecurities are removed and you can achieve your ideal lifestyle by being in the right state, managing your energy and being the person you need to be. So that you can then let it happen through your rituals rather than having to continuously push to make it happen through the slog of dogged discipline. Now to whet your appetite on the seven essential steps to removing your insecurities and becoming unhindered, Jamin goes through them in our

awesome conversation today. And if unhindered is anything like his previous book that I've just been reading from then it's going to be life-changing as well as a great read so get yourself a copy of it or his other books at jamonfraser.com forward slash jamon books now that's jamon j-e-e j-a-e-m-i-n and fraser f-r-a-z-e-r so if you're serious about achieving sustainable success in any area of your life then eliminating any deep-rooted subconscious insecurities and negative self-talk is going to be absolutely mission critical. So let me challenge you to start on this foundational self-help work because as I always say it's a start that stops most people. So to get started on yourself just jump on our website knowhowproperty.com.au

hit the get in touch button fill in your details and put unhindered in the comment section or just email me direct at bushey at knowhowproperty.com.au with unhindered in the subject line and add a sentence on what you would do with your life if you were truly unhindered. And Jamin has kindly offered complimentary copies of his new book for the best responses. In the meantime, get ready to soak in a wealth of wisdom

as we enjoy this great chat with Jamin Fraser. Welcome back, Freedom Fighters. Now, for many years, I've sensed and seen that our personal insecurities are our biggest limitations. Many of us are not aware of our insecurities, and if we are, we have difficulty overcoming them. And while insecurity has always been at the base of most of the world's ills, we also sense that in the world of amplified everything, for many, our level of insecurity is getting worse, not better. To me, insecurity is the insidious hidden villain with a thousand faces

And while we all have them, we don't like talking about them So to tackle insecurity head on And to help you eliminate your doubts, your fears and your self-limiting beliefs I thought we'd do a deep dive chat on the subject With one of the world's leading voices on personal insecurity Jamin Fraser So welcome and let's get invested Jamin Hey Bushy, thanks so much for having me on the show

Yeah, really looking forward to it mate I think you're doing some awesome work and an area that is probably under-recognised but has a massive impact. But, mate, for those of the audience that haven't come across you, can I get you to start by telling us who you are, what you do and why you do it, mate? Sure. So I'm Jamin Fraser. I am the founder of The Insecurity Project and I specialise in helping leaders, entrepreneurs, business owners,

ambitious people trying to do good in the world. I help them solve the insecurity problem so they can show up to life at their best where it matters most. Why I do it, I think people suffer greatly and unnecessarily around unresolved insecurity. So this feels like the problem that I was born to solve and it's something that I do with my whole heart and soul. So I think it's a global problem, as you mentioned,

and is the biggest inhibitor of performance, not only in business but in life in general. So it's a very important subject and it demands a clear, intelligent and complete solution. Yeah, absolutely right. Mate, I'm going to love diving into all aspects of that shortly. But just to kick off, I'd love you to take us back on your journey so far, if you don't mind, mate, and focus on where you've invested your time, your energy and your money, what you did and why, What did you learn from it?

What were the wins, the losses, and how has that got you through to where you are today, mate? Okay, so look, I think it's probably worth starting. It's worth starting when I got voted in as school captain at primary school, I reckon. That's probably as good a place to start as anywhere. So I grew up in a country town, one of four kids the oldest. so you know I was always a good kid but a pretty shy kid but I liked the idea of responsibility

I liked the idea of you know being a positive impact on those around me and so it was a great honor like I thought wow wouldn't it be amazing to be the school captain I'd seen good leaders go before me and thought one day it'll be amazing but you know I didn't quite think that that would ever happen um so it was a real honor to be captain there and i think it kind of started a bit of a spark in me to go okay um you know i i do have some capacity to to be responsible and to lead so i kind of i probably invested in that idea as the first thing that i invested in the idea of if you're responsible and you can set a good example for others um so that kind of followed through my high school years.

Again, I was a good kid, a shy kid, a quiet kid, but a good kid. Yeah. Hey, mate, I'm going to dive in there. You've said that a couple of times now, a good kid but a shy kid. What's a good kid? I'm really interested in this. Is that what someone else said was good or is that what people felt? I'd love to sort of expand on that a little bit if you don't mind.

Why did they think you were good? I think I had a strong moral compass even from a young age. I think I'm great. I really appreciate my parents. I'm very grateful for them. And I think they modelled, you know, healthy values. They love each other. You know, they've had a great marriage my whole life.

They were good parents. They were generous people. You know, faith was a key part of their world, so they were kind. They wanted to help those around them. And so I think they modelled that sense of morality and generosity. So that was something that appealed to me and I saw that within myself as well and I liked that. I liked that I could tell the difference between good and bad

and not because of what others said but I felt like I could trust my conscience a lot of the time. So I think I invested in listening to my own insights around what was good and bad and not being swayed by, you know, what others thought needed to happen. So, yeah, I think that's how I'd answer that question. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's good.

That puts some real context around it. Sorry, I interrupted there, mate. And clearly in the back of your mind there was sort of a semi-goal of being school captain. Why do you think they selected you for that role? Is it because of what you've just said? Yeah, I think it probably was. I think that people noticed that I made decisions that, you know,

were towards values and towards being generous and being kind and that I cared about other people. So I think even though I was shy and not very vocal, I think that's probably what others saw. And I think that's probably what continued to grow because once I got a taste for Thanksgiving, captain i i remember setting my intention in year seven i said well i might as well be the captain when i'm year 12 as well and so um yeah i invested in that idea and and sure enough year 12 i was i

was the captain as well and probably hadn't hadn't changed a lot in my ethos around you know being good and being and being quiet being responsible doing doing the right thing because i thought it was the right thing not because it was necessarily popular so i think people just just knew that i would i was responsible i think that was enough for them to uh to get their vote to be leader with that that quietness i guess came across that it can be read a number of ways but uh sometimes quietness can be read as as quiet confluence is is that what you think you were portraying at that stage that sort of reinforced that is it more and it was more by your actions rather than your words that people could measure you by?

Yeah, I think it was, but I was shy. Like, I didn't have a lot of confidence, really. You know, I often remember being a home-baked kid. That was a term, you know, others had given me. You know, we didn't have a lot of money, and Mum was a sewing teacher, and so naturally she made all of our clothes, and often our clothes matched each other's as brothers. And so, you know, I just remember the moniker of being a home-baked kid.

I just thought, oh, wow. So I wasn't one of the cool kids. I always tried hard when it came to athletics, carnivals and sport, but I certainly wasn't anywhere. I somehow had the good fortune of being invited to play basketball with all the cool kids. But, you know, from, you know, year three to year 11, or you talk I was the kid on the team that no one wanted to pass the ball to

so I was and I would panic if I ever got the ball even though I was always sad that I didn't I so I took me a long time to develop I was I was a late maturer so I think there was a there was a real lack of confidence in many ways um but that that kind of moral backbone was that was the one quality that uh you know I felt I had some kind of confidence in you yeah so Yes, it's interesting, mate, because in many ways I thought you were describing my own childhood because I'm very similar, country boy, my brothers and I, exactly the same drill actually and had a real lack of confidence on the sports arena, but I was better in my head. So I could work hard and overcome my own lack of accuracy just by working hard

was pretty much the approach that I adopted early on. Where did that shyness and that lack of confidence come from, mate, do you think? Yeah, I don't know. I think it was just a comparison looking around at the kids who had better talents, had more money, had natural, you know, they were more attractive. I just kind of compared myself with them and thought,

oh, clearly I don't quite measure up. So I think that's where I just naturally ranked myself and thought, yeah, I'm just not one of those kids, so I'll just take my place here. I'll be a bit quieter. I'll be a good kid and a responsible kid. I won't get into trouble and I'll do the right thing, but, yeah, I'm not as good as these other kids.

Yeah, wow, that's a pretty big thing, not as good as these other kids. That's a pretty big statement, mate. Yeah, absolutely, and it certainly was a legacy that stuck for a little while. um i think that like we grew up in a christian home and it was a christianity that my parents again lived very authentically and so it's quite appealing to me and so that that was how i thought about more confidence back then i thought that i could find more confidence in a in a faith experience in a in a sense of a relationship with god and and feeling loved by that god um so i

I think that's how I compensated for my own shyness then and I really threw myself into the church world. I translated that kind of moral backbone into my Christian faith and my responsibility and so kind of naturally emerged as a youth group leader in that space. And then I was not sure what I was going to do when I finished school. I flirted with a bunch of ideas, from marine biology to landscape architect to civil engineer.

In fact, I thought that the best place for me was to join the Army and to do an apprenticeship, you know, through ADFA, do my degree in engineering. And that was what I thought was going to work for me. And my natural leadership that I demonstrated as captain kind of put me in good stead down that path. and I made it through all the checks and balances until the final hurdle and it was just when I finished year 12 and, you know, straighty 180,

good kid as I mentioned a thousand times already, I got invited to my mate's 18th birthday party straight after school finished, got there a little bit late, was starving. My mate says, oh, Frase, you know, I've got just the thing for you and sat me down to a plate of hash cookies and I had no idea what I was eating and so i'm enjoying these delicious treats and i'm high on life because i'm just finished year 12 so i didn't kind of really notice what was happening but um anyway sure enough my my army interview a week later got done for drugs and so it was a an incredible fork in the road experience

where i was so devastated yeah you know but in hindsight like it's funny i bumped into that guy like probably 10 years I didn't see him for 10 years after that day and I bumped into him um in the workers club in Goulburn and uh he he was shocked to see me and nearly cried like he he'd clearly been carrying the guilt of that moment for 10 years and uh he apologized to me said Fraser I shouldn't have done that I've ruined your life you know and I've been thinking about this ever since and I said oh mate like I think you saved my life actually like I don't know what I was thinking of joining the Army. That would have been a disaster.

So thanks so much. Marijuana saved me. Thank you. I love that, Mark. When the Army career guy asked you the hard question, you would have been, what are you talking about, I'm guessing. Take us back there. Of course, absolutely.

Yeah. Listen, someone was the last time you were experimenting with drugs. I'm like, no, never. He said, well, the tests don't lie. your blood and your urine tells you you've got marijuana in your system so that's instant disqualification they tell your story walking so it was quite a shock and then having to explain it to my parents and you know anyway but so yeah I was a bit of I was at a bit of a loose end and I kind of enrolled to do a landscape architecture degree at the University of New South Wales

then deferred for the year um and there was you know you know youth groups are great for having camps and that was always a highlight of my younger years and there was a camp that I went to when I finished year 12 and it was a real life-changing experience for me because that's what I felt like I had a really profound personal experience of faith it had always been something I liked and it was kind of off the back of my parents faith but that was the first time for me where it actually became real and it was life-changing and it's and from that moment all i wanted to do was to um to help other people have that same experience so then to take the leadership idea and go well i'm i'm going to be a leader within the church that's that is my destiny

that's what i'm going to do with my life and it was so clear for me and and instantly like i got home from that camp um didn't i never went back to university i signed up for a diploma in theology instead in canberra moved to canberra um and you know invested in learning everything i could about uh about christianity with the with the idea of one day becoming a leader within the church in that time met my wife and got engaged and married you know pretty young at 19 we were married while I was still studying and then you know got given the the leadership of the youth group in my church and then a very short time later when the senior minister retired slash resigned I actually got given the senior leadership of the church that I've grown up in

Wow. How old were you then? I was 23 at that stage. Massive. Yeah, and we had a Christian school and a daycare centre at the time, so it was a baptism of fire. And six weeks into that, I realised that the business side of things, the church, I mean the school and the daycare,

was basically trading insolvently. And so it was an intense experience of trying to navigate not only the leadership of the faith community but the business aspect you know without any business training so um yeah very very testing time let's talk us through that because i mean that would have been very challenging matter and it's like there would have been mixed emotions i'm guessing that there's the honor of being uh you know recognized as a leadership of a of quite a community i'm guessing it was a it was a country area so a very respected position and then the growing realization the more you dug into it that holy hell what have i inherited here this is this

is this has got some got some troubles to talk us about the the feelings you had and how you managed through that situation yeah yeah i mean there was a business manager for the school and daycare center and he'd gone overseas uh for six weeks um and so so i then had not only had the leadership of it but i had the running of it as well and no real help and that was kind of my first discovery at the nature of the books um and i just thought this this is horrific like this is this is probably illegal um and when he came home even though he was you know probably 30 years my senior had all the experience and had been running the show um i just knew that i i had to fire him like I just knew that whatever he was doing, he was being irresponsible

and he clearly wasn't taking responsibility for searing this ship and was not bringing it to our attention that it was trading insolvently. So I can still remember that meeting vividly because it was the first real opportunity to put my money where my mouth was and make a courageous decision to go, this isn't right. I know I don't really have authority over you, but I have some moral obligation to say that we can't keep doing this. Like, this is not going to work

and I can't see how we can sustain your position knowing that we're training and solving. How did that go, mate? Because, I mean, I'm going to – I might be a little bit off here but painting the picture that I'm seeing, here's a guy that's 30 years your senior. He's probably been in the role for quite a length of time, pretty comfortable.

He's probably, in his own right, well-respected amongst the church community. He is a young 23-year-old Johnny-come-lately saying, mate, we can't do this any longer. How did that roll out, mate? Did you have that meeting one-on-one with him and then you did? I did have that meeting one-on-one. It was kind of a surprise.

I'd spoken to the leadership team before that saying this is my concerns and they were all a bit cautious. Like, you know, he's been here for 30 years. Like, he knows what he's doing and he's sure. and I just couldn't fathom how everyone was so lax about it. And so the instruction from the team was, you know, don't do anything rash, just we'll talk about it when he comes home. Anyway, he came back off the plane, came straight from the plane

to his office because there was something in his office he'd left there and his question was, oh, Jamin, how was things while I was away? And I didn't have any intention of having the conversation then and there but one thing led to another and we had the conversation then and there and i can i can still vividly remember him just going wait wait what and he got a bit of paper and a pen and and he drew me at 23 and him at 53 and just to try to to try exactly what you said hang on who are you again and what what are you gonna do and you're you're here and i'm here and and the diagram like there was nothing on the diagram except a picture of

him and me highlighting the difference in experience and knowledge. I'm guessing you look like David and he looked like a Goliath, I'm guessing. That's right. But I just hold firm. I said, I don't know. But the one thing I do know is this isn't okay and I'm going to hold you responsible for, you know, mismanaging this and not alerting us soon enough.

So I'm going to fight this battle. So that's what we're going to do. So just kind of backed myself there and had that conversation. And, yeah, there was a bit of a big fallout as a result of that. Some people liked it and, you know, didn't think my decision was the right one. But anyway, it became the process of kind of me taking leadership of that group of people and then navigating, you know, the closure of businesses, the sale of properties and paying back tax debt and unpaid super and leading that community. So there were probably three years of real heartache trying to navigate that.

But, you know, the idealism of youth, you know, it was probably useful that I was green behind the ears and didn't know that because I just had such a conviction that all would be well, you know, that I was doing God's work and that, you know, we'd find a way through. And so that's kind of what we did. Yeah, I love it, mate. I love it.

That is a massive challenge to take on. And I can imagine that everyone would have been going, does this guy really know what he's doing? There would have been a lot of that, given the sort of culture that had probably grown up around the business manager and the level of acceptance that had. Once the bird was out of the cage, there would have been some

wide eyes I would imagine and then some real challenges to actually manoeuvre through that and you would have worn the brunt of most of that mate at a fairly tender age how did that affect your, because you know you said you had that moment on that school camp

that was almost like an awakening like I've got this deep personal experience of faith that has become the driving force, did any of that experience start to dent the shine on that while you were sort of managing it, Matt, or not? No, I don't think so. I think that only got stronger through that period,

and I think that was what I kept relying on, and that was my confidence. It was very much a confidence in God more than a confidence in myself, I think, at that point as a young man. And, yeah, so that's how I navigated that. But it was challenging watching this play out because I think, again, the idealism of leading a faith community, I just imagined that it would be everyone's intention would be to do the right thing and everyone's intention would be to be authentic and all in.

You know, but the nature of religious organisations is they're very political, you know, they're business operations, there's people who tie their identity with their roles and there's a bunch of stuff that's happening behind the scenes that's very different from anything to do with faith. And that was a great challenge for me to navigate that stuff because I just always grated with me and I wished it could be different. I wished for a pure version of community that didn't need to be tied

to an institutional model. And eventually, at about year eight of leading that community, I had a Mal Meninga moment is the only way I can describe it I don't know if you remember Mal Meninga's first day of politics Do you remember that? Yeah I do but let's expand on it for listeners mate It's one of the great moments in Australian political history Someone's convinced Mal that he should run as an MP

and, you know, he's in and his first day, first press conference, you know, 100 journalists pumping him with questions, microphones everywhere, and he gets three or four questions in, you know, already sweating, and he just stops in the moment of awareness, takes off his lapel mic and just goes, yeah, I can't do this. And that's it, walks out. It was just incredible.

and I think, you know, although my tenure was a lot longer than 20 minutes, I reached a point where I'm like, I just can't keep doing this. This is not working for me and the great crisis was the challenge between an authentic experience of faith community and the mess and minutiae of institutional religion and organisational dynamics and leadership power plays and so I just, it would cause me all kinds of grief.

And so I contemplated, you know, walking away from the ministry then, but I instead decided to confront some of the institutional problems as I saw them. And so I proceeded to, you know, kick everyone out of the church for three months and close the doors. So growing up in a Pentecostal church, I'm sure there are plenty of people listening who have no church experience, But just a quick insight about Pentecostalism, if you think about, you know, Christianity, there's the two sides of the fence, the Catholics and the Protestants.

But in the Protestant side, there's 30,000 Protestant denominations. So there's a very wide variety of expression and experience. So the Pentecostals are probably up the contemporary end, and their leadership structure is much more autocratic, whereas down the other end there's lots of congregational-style leaderships and very traditional forms and similar to some of the high, you know, the ritualistic Catholicism. Anyway, so that's to say I had a bit of power as a Pentecostal leader.

so I had a vision for what needed to happen and I decided that's what I was going to do so I decided to shut the church, kick everyone out for three months and just call people to an account and go, you know, what are we doing here, folks? Are we just playing a game or is this real to anybody? This doesn't look like much that resembles anything I read in the Bible about the message and ministry of Jesus.

You know, this looks like something that we do to feel good about ourselves that is very disconnected from any kind of real-life scenario. Mate, I love it. Mate, I'd take my hat off to you. That very gutsy and strong, courageous manoeuvre. Yeah. How did that go down? Again, I'd just share that.

Not well at all. In fact, there are still people in my hometown who would cross the other side of the street if they saw me, you know, 10 years on. The only way of understanding that decision was that I was the Antichrist. it was it was horrific like it uh it was it was very messy there were some people that just were absolutely horrified that i would dare do something like that um and so yeah we had a

church of maybe 120 or so and um and of that there were only 30 that came back in three months so I bit the hand that fed me in many ways and so I had to explore some other work and I got a job as a school chaplain when John Howard first put out some funding for chaplaincy I had an opportunity to become a chaplain at a local high school which was an incredible experience Yeah, I just want to step back there from a minute before

we sort of go into that then so you've gone from 120 back to 30 And many people would say, again, looking from the inside out, being brought up in a strong Christian family myself early on, that you're sort of like Jesus overturning the traitors in the foyer of the church, basically saying, this is rubbish, you can't do this here. I'm sure the 30 would have been on side because they obviously understood your vision and were probably troubled with the politics and the other institutional game playing that goes on when man gets involved in anything that's a good idea

and it tends to go that way but how did you emerge from that and then go on I'm now Mal Meninger I'm done here I've got to go Well, Mount Meninga was before that. Mount Meninga was the decision that made me shut the doors.

That was Mount Meninga. When people came back in three months, it was the most lovely experience of faith community I've ever had. The next two years, it was really cool because people were there because they wanted to be there, not because they had to be there. We were very fluid and as is the case in any organisational structure, the origins are often looked back on with the most fondness because there's the the flexibility to reinvent and and do something that's very current and and

present that's not encumbered with years of tradition and and politics so it was a lovely experience um and yeah so yeah but it kind of it kind of um opened up a can of worms for me that i hadn't imagined in that you know one good question leads to two and two lead to five and you know questions have the ability to change everything so it was an exploration for me in my own understanding of faith and and calling and purpose and a whole bunch of things because I could no longer you know rely on the security of paid leadership and a bunch of people who had given me a platform to speak every week I kind of deconstructed that that hierarchical leadership structure and just said we're a bunch of people um gathering around a common ideal and

uh everyone has a part to play in that so it meant now i was out of a career really so uh and the financial challenges that came with that and the purpose challenges it was a really interesting time of reinventing myself in that period as well yeah okay and and i'll we'll come back to this but i'm guessing you're confronting some of your own insecurities on this journey yeah through the through the fire you're putting yourself through well i did i mean the first one was to was to go okay so i'm comfortable in this in this church world that's where i i know i've done my time built my craft i'm i'm passionate about that but but now i've got to go find work outside that so the first option the school chaplain i can i remember seeing the ad in the

paper and thinking this this could really work i'm you know uh while i wasn't that confident and comfortable at school i've got to develop a bit of confidence and in my public speaking and i think yeah i reckon i could fit in with high schoolers again and uh relive some of my school years that'd be fun and uh but i i went to the school to apply and a good mate of my mind a good a mate of mine actually had got in before me and really thought that position was his. He was doing casual work at the school at the time and thought he'd had casual work and chaplaincy at the same time

and just thought it was wonderful. And so I called him and said, look, mate, I don't want to cut your grass here. I'd like to apply, but I know that you've got your eye on this job. And he said, oh, go for life. You're welcome to apply. He says, oh, I'll get it, but you're welcome to apply. And so, oh, okay, great. so you know sure enough I got the job and he didn't um which was a surprise to both of us

but it was it was such an interesting experience in insecurity because day one I can vividly remember the school principal saying all right Jamin you're the first school chaplain here we don't even know what a school chaplain does uh so just just go and can you just go and be there for for the kids is that can you just go do that like you're not a teacher you're not a parent you're a chaplain just go chaplain like that was the job description you know so but I'm like okay so I look out in school and there's like 800 kids and I'm thinking you can't just bowl up to teenagers and be friends with them these kids are going to beat me up what are you on mate yeah so then I thought I'm just going to hide in my office and wait till the needy kids come find me

you know that wasn't the mandate I'd been told you know go into the school make a difference here add value you know show us that this is a good position and so it was a really stark moment of going it's not going to work for me to be insecure here this is not going to not going to serve me and so I had these beliefs that were true for me about who I was and what I could do from my own experience of school and I had to confront them straight away and so I'd begun to explore some personal development stuff and just realized a bit of the nature of beliefs and so my early on experiment was to go what if i was to what if i was to put on a new belief like a jumper every time i got to this school and the belief was um everybody here likes me why wouldn't they

um because i kind of knew that whatever you believe you'll find evidence for so i had a bunch of evidence that you can't make friends with teenagers and and people are going I think I'm weird but what if that's not true and what if everybody here likes me why wouldn't they so I literally put that on like a jumper every time I got out of the car and then started to let me jump in there because I know having spent a long time doing affirmations and you know I reckon for three years I repeated affirmations that in my head I'm going this is bullshit I don't I don't believe a word of this but I just kept doing it because someone told me it was a good idea and all of a sudden without me even it's like a frog in a boiling pot and all of a sudden

it's like i do believe this and it thinks out of the changes is that what you found that that's a pretty gutsy uh effort mate actually well yeah i'm i'm a very pragmatic i'm a very pragmatic person so i i'm oriented by what works so i went okay i'm here as the chaplain for two years so i want this position to work so this old belief is not going to suit that role it's it's going to cause a bunch of pain it's incongruent so i have to find one that works better than that whether i believe it or not doesn't really matter i've got to find a better story and so i was really adamant that that's what i was going to try on and wash up to school as though everybody liked me why wouldn't they and ever in any evidence i could find that they didn't like and i just put it down to they

just didn't know me yet and so you can imagine how different that went quite quickly because if I you know bowl up to year 11 students and I think you know I'm supposed to be here but I think you don't like me I'm going to be nervous I'm going to be silly I'm going to try and make jokes and they're going to think I'm a tool you know and then it's going to go badly but if I bowl up to them already knowing that they like me why wouldn't they then I'm relaxed I'm not even worried about me i can be totally focused on them i'll be interested in what they're doing i'll remember their name i'll remember what's happening i'll i'll say g'day when i see them in the playground um and it's going to get much better and even if they talk about me behind my back when i'm not

there well i'll delete that evidence because it's not what i'm looking for anyway like that's a i've got to step in there because that's that's quite a revelational uh awareness that you came to for a for a good kid and a shy kid at school who would have walked into that school with exactly those, all of those feelings would have flooded back. Yeah, they did. They so flooded back. It was very, and it was high stakes, but it was all about the outcome

I was looking to get. And I think, you know, pre-empting some of the insecurity framework we'll cover a bit later, being clear about what you want, it is such a central part of personal development because it just gives you a reason to do what's hard. you lose sight of what you want and there's no point so um so so as chaplain um one of the ideas that i had was you know how i could make a difference to the school is what if i did a thought of the week on assembly each week and you know i've kind of applied my i've built my craft

as a public speaker within the church what i wonder if i could speak on assembly um and kind of it was a good idea before and before i thought about it too much i've been given a microphone and and literally that i i was given like two to three minutes with with these criteria it had to be funny meaningful memorable not overtly christian and you know how do i tick all these boxes and if it was anything other than that i'd be mauled by these kids you know and so thursday morning had come around i'd be like oh no it's it's like you used to call me chapo it's chapo's thought of the week on assembly what am i going to say this week and i would just stress and sweat about it all morning until i came up with an idea so often like literally

60 seconds before i'm going on i'm still finalizing what i'm going to say but i just got up there and swung away and then you know wrote the excerpt of it for the school newsletter each week and um it kind of got a bit of a cult following and it became the thing everyone used to look forward to at assembly and um i by the time i finished there at the end of two years and the last chap I thought of the week I I told them that I was actually quitting the job and I was going to start my own coaching business which I've you know I've jumped jumped ahead a bit but but all that to say um every kid in the school stood up and gave me a standing ovation massive and it and the principal looked at me and said Damon no one has ever had a standing

ovation in this school and I just remember thinking holy smokes that that's the power of a changed belief because I would not have got that result had I hung on to my old belief which i was sure was true and yeah it turns out look i've got evidence everyone here likes me why wouldn't they they're all on their feet and that kind of that was a very defining moment for me about this the notion of how malleable beliefs and story was and how how much evidence we can find when we change these stories yeah i love that mate and i i think the that the sharpening of the sword that you were doing every week for yourself by having to come up with something that was funny, memorable

and not overly Christian and the connection you would have made with the kids because, you know, adolescents in particular, if it's a high school, they're looking to laugh. So if you made them laugh every week and you left them with something memorable and no doubt meaningful, then you would have had quite an impact, probably more so than the teacher in the classroom actually. uh as a consequence of that and and at the same time from a personal perspective forcing yourself

to face that challenge every week it's you know i i do the same with with with these podcasts and with the with the i do a weekly bush bite and that challenges me every week uh to step up to the plate and that the personal development that comes with that is uh exceptional and i and i i love love the challenge of it and probably without knowing it you were doing exactly the same was was it a conscious thing or it just sort of happened oh I said yes I'd do it from the start and then I'd committed myself and so then everyone expected it and I was in so I kind of said yes work out here later and then I had to do it so but yeah it was the hardest speaking gig of my entire life and um but you're right the amount of personal growth that happened in that experience by going

outside of what was safe um but but again i just it was part of my rationale for how can i how can i make as big a difference as possible here um you know imagine the honor of being given the microphone for two hours a week the opportunity to speak to this whole this whole school and and give them something that's meaningful and give them something they could remember and give them something that could help them navigate some of the challenges of being a teenager um yeah that'd be a real treat i reckon i could work on my own insecurities in order to be able to be useful like that to these kids so that's kind of what got me across the line love it i love the size of the challenge that you you force yourself to step up to the plate which is just brilliant

mate so the you sort of jumped ahead and talked about the coaching exercise so you got to obviously got to a point in the being chaper was like there might be more or i'm looking for something else talk us through what your thinking was and how that led you into the coaching thing i mean it was i was getting paid very very minimally uh to do a job i enjoyed it was only two days a week i wasn't i was still getting a little bit of income from the church um but it's just it wasn't a sustainable plan for either of those two things and we had a young family at the time I just thought, ah, man, this is not really the future. Plus, I'm developing all these skills.

I'm diving into personal development. I'm growing my ability to influence. And then amazingly, I invited a mentor of mine to come run a church community, and I asked him to bring some personal development content with that. And so he brought some coaching frameworks that I'd never heard before, and it literally blew my mind, and I just thought, that is a missing technology. As pastor, I was quite a frustrated pastor because as pastors, you're invited into people's world to talk about change, the deep issues, the challenges in their relationships and their finances with their kids. You're kind of invited to be there for those kind of pain points. But the conversations about change very rarely led to change because the typical response was to outsource the change work to God.

So, you know, I'll pray about that or I'll just trust God or I'll read my Bible. If I pray enough, then God will magically somehow fix my marriage or restore my relationship with my kids or get me that promotion. So it was this very childlike response to life. And it always troubled me. I just thought I'm pretty sure there's more to it. I'm pretty sure we're invited to participate in this process. And the way I see it, I think the greatest gifts we've been given as human beings is responsibility and choice.

So anyway, when I got exposed to the coaching skill set, I just thought, you're kidding me. Like where is this being? This is a technology that belongs and I need to learn this right now. You know, I am a bit impulsive as well as being pragmatic and so when I got my head around the idea, I want to do it yesterday. So I literally signed up for a diploma in life coaching, you know, the very next day after that church camp.

And it was day three of my first or day two of my first three-day intensive a month later and I'm just like, that's it. I'm going to quit my job as a chaplain and I'm going to start a coaching business. And I called my wife and told her this great idea and she cried. and not tears of joy and what are you doing like i've got this i can make this work this is you know this is so cool you'll you know i'm going to make a million dollars i'm going to change the world and the coaching coach training space is very hyped up and uh looking back on it now my goodness there's a lot of froth and bubble in it and everyone comes out of that room after three

days feeling like you know they're going to change the world and be millionaires they're selling the selling the dream yep yeah it certainly was a lot harder than that but but i kind of thought it wasn't like i was transitioning from car salesman to life coach or you know engineer to life coach i was already in the space of working with people and totally thinking about change so it felt congruent it felt like a continuation of purpose i just had some better tools so so i was confident that i could be useful um so yeah so i gave myself four weeks of to make it work that's how much notice i gave the school the school principal just said jayman you you are an idiot like literally this is going so well we love you here the kids love

you you're great at it what are you you're gonna be a life coach what even is a life coach you're gonna be a life coach in goldman like people don't pay for life coaching in goldman you're an idiot he literally called me an idiot three times um but i just knew uh i got this uh this is this is right for me and so some strange confidence i went out and had a crack um but four weeks it was much harder than i thought and i didn't land a single client and i'd normally talk about uh any successful business taking at least two years and four years before we start to make a difference so four weeks was a pretty tall order i know i was highly ambitious but uh it was incredible on the last day i had money for the school

i remember driving around town and i i was just questioning what i'd done and thinking about the foolishness of my plans and just thought that you know one last time i had the words of the school principal ringing in my head he just said look you don't want to be chaplain here you should go work for Campbell Page they're an employment agency doing some good work with the unemployed I think that might suit you and I just kind of went whatever when he said it because it was kind of a back-end remark but for whatever reason you know that that business name was there in my head as I'm driving around town and so I thought you know what I'm gonna drive into Campbell Page and so it's employment agency I walk in there I didn't know that the manager at

time was a girl that I'd gone to school with so she knew me and asked what I was doing and I said oh I'm a life coach now and she said that's really interesting we were just talking about how desperately we could use a coach working with our long-term unemployed and she said what what could you do and I said oh well matter of fact I could do a whole bunch of good here and and so she said what what's your program said oh look it's a it's a six-week program uh you know covering these six ideas and just kind of making it up on the spot um okay great that sounds good and what would it be what would you charge and well i don't know i just kind of pulled a figure out that would be fine oh my goodness and then she says um would you be free to start next week um you know so i look

in my diary and pretend that there's actually something written in there um i had to shift around and looks like i can start look at that what a great thing and within within two weeks she'd she'd made give me a start at um at three locations so so i was kind of coaching 18 clients a week uh long-term unemployed clients who with significant barriers to work wow and they'd given me their hardest most recalcitrant people to say all right swing away life coach what can you do with these people test that out it was it was such an incredible experience because um you know i'd funny way to earn money which that was that was amazing yeah but i'm like wow if these these ideas are going to work well they got to work with the down and out they got to work with the people

who've given up hope who are significantly stuck who've been written off so um so i i bought brought my a game and and went right well this is a privilege to serve you and um and i can still I vividly remember early on conversations with people who were profoundly stuck, some illiterate, some had had massive abuse, some had had people murdered in their families, some had been unemployed their whole life. But watching what happened when they understood responsibility and choice, just those simple ideas and swapping them

out of the victim space and helping them take control their life and watching them get hope, and it was such a privilege and very impacting on me. And I discovered something in there which, you know, now has become like probably the central part of all my coaching work, and that was what happens if you can set up a clean conversation with someone. So I noticed that everyone had an agenda for these people,

like their friends and family. Judgment. Yeah, there was total judgment. They wanted them to be better than they were. They needed them to be better than they were. The employment agency, they would get paid the most for having their longest-term unemployed get work. So they were their most lucrative clients.

So there was a bunch of pressure from everyone in their world. And so I rocked up and I just said, from the very first day, I said, and by the way, you cannot confuse me for someone who gives a shit about you. I know I look like a guy who cares, but you can't confuse me for someone who gives a shit. And I just held that line as highly as I could. I knew that that was my only opportunity to serve these people.

I had to make sure that they knew that I was not someone who wanted them to do something they didn't want to do, that my only value to them was to serve them to get more of what they wanted. But they had to want it. And I was so sure that they did want something. I was just so unprepared to believe their story that they didn't want anything, that they weren't satisfied being stuck.

It's probably not their story, though. It's a story that had been imposed on them, hadn't it? Of course. So, yeah, anyway, it just created this cleanliness, this ability for them to come out of hiding, have honest conversations. Love it. Honest conversations. Let me dive straight in there because people would have loved the honesty

because that would have been the first time that anyone had ever said that to them. I'd absolutely guarantee it because you've got two sides of the fence in that whole equation. You've got the do-gooders who are doing it and they want to help them, but they don't really want to help them because if they help them too much, then they do themselves out of the job. Yeah, the rest. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then on the other flip side of the coin, you've got those who really don't care and pretend they do. But no one would, again, no one would have said that to them. I can imagine the looks on the faces when you said, well, don't mistake me for someone who gives a shit. The reaction would have been interesting to start with before you then empower them to go, this is about you taking control of your own life.

Yeah. It would have been quite amazing. There was one guy who I just thought, I've got to push this further than I've ever pushed before because when I got to the agency, they'd said, right, we're giving you our hardest guy. He's been at books for three years. He's just a deadbeat. Like his dad bankrolls him, you know, sees no financial pressure.

He sits in a dark room playing PlayStation all day. He's on every program, zero motivation. Like this guy is just, he's a waste of space. Like that's how they framed him. Wow. And so I thought, okay, this will be interesting. So I walk in the room and I just went, G'day, mate, just wondering, are you a piece of shit?

And he said, pardon me? I said, are you a piece of shit? And he stood up and he came over and eyeballed me and he said, don't you dare speak to me like that again. I said, oh, fantastic. I mean, I didn't think you were. These guys out here just said you're a no-hoper who had no ambition. I couldn't imagine that was true.

I just had to find out for myself. so he was like what just happened then and from then i had him because it was like don't tell me you've got no ambition don't tell me you're satisfied hiding in the dark room doing nothing with your life like all right you know there's more to this and you've already just you've outed yourself as someone who has ambition so love it just it created a very different conversation than they'd ever had before. That was the point. And they kind of got that early on because I just was so non-negotiable

about that. I realised if I could set that space up from the start, then I could be useful. If I lost that space and I brought my caring into the conversation or I was going to encourage them or believe in them or fix them, it was game over. So that always stuck with me. Because that paternalistic sort of undertone that sort of goes

with all of that is part of the reason why it doesn't work. So coming back to, you know, and you've mentioned it a couple of times again, that the responsibility and choice, which then leads to hope, they are the keys. And when someone's woken up to the fact that if it's going to be, it's up to me, then that puts a completely different inflection on the whole equation. I love the freshness of that.

That's very refreshing to hear. Tell us about the results that flowed out of that. I can imagine they were pretty amazing. They were amazing and the employment agency was amazed. Like there were people making change, making real change, you know, not only getting jobs but dealing with dysfunction in their life, ending addiction, reconciling with family members. There were people making some significant life changes

and it was incredible. And it kind of created a problem for me because the employment agency was like, well, okay, this is great. Where else can we do this? And it fed into my ambition. I was like, well, maybe I could develop a program and then train others to run this program. And I kind of proceeded to do that.

And, you know, at the heart of that operation had 30 coaches working for me delivering a program that I'd developed for employment agencies but it all it all it all kind of uh the quality control on it was pretty ordinary the front end looked all pretty good the back end was a nightmare and it was so overwhelming and uh it's the old story though if you the better you get at something the less you do of it you end up trying to train other people and and often that does you then become a manager not a doer and that managing piece is just a whole different world isn't it it is and it was it turned out it was a lot harder to train coaches than i imagined because they all think they can they all think they can that's right but

uh you know they they would often get in the way they often wouldn't have the insights and their the intuition to be able to hold the space so the results started to fall away and you know it got pretty messy um so I went into business partnership with another coach at that time and and that was a really interesting moment of insecurity for me because when it all started to fall apart I think oh I'm clearly I'm not a business guy um so I need to outsource the business side of this to someone else and and defer to their wisdom and I'll just be the coaching guy um so yeah that that didn't go that well in the end it kind of i just really dropped like i took my eyes off the business piece entirely and just trusted someone else to take care of that

and you know so you're back with the business manager of the church mate what's that you're back with the with the business manager of the uh the church yeah yeah that's right and so it didn't end up going that well and the business model got very top heavy very quickly and i lost a fair bit of money and it all kind of ended in tears after five years wow so it was an interesting exploration in the cost of insecurity there because it was like wow why couldn't i trust myself to think about solving some of these problems myself rather than not wanting to think about it and paying someone else to worry about that stuff because i didn't think I was good enough but it was kind of in that window that I really uncovered a mountain of

insecurity that probably you know seeded where I am today with Insecurity Project and that's when I went to write my first book because I'd you know I probably thought about it for some time that it was possible and that I might have had something today to say but the whole coach training world was so hyped up and you know it was a possibility space and so positive and empowering and you know so i kind of was encouraged okay go write your book and so i thought i could do this and i i got an idea and then i started telling a few people about it and i can vividly remember the moment i decided i'm actually going to write this book and i told my best friend and my wife um you know when i was away in melbourne one time i called him and said

this is what i'm going to do and went back to the hotel room and wrote the first chapter of my first book i'm so excited and so passionate and so much energy but then literally when i the moment i shut the lid on my laptop at about 11 o'clock that night all that passion and excitement and energy turned to fear and dread and holy shit what have i done um you know now i've put it out there what if what if i can't what if it's no good what if i'm a failure what if people hate it uh and and it was ferocious i i don't think i slept all night just this anxiety and and kind of uncovered this real imposter fear inside that i wasn't good enough to to be one of the big boys i wasn't really capable of of real influence and uh yeah it was horrific but but i kind of because it was

so intense i also made a commitment the next day that i would find a way not only to manage that insecurity but I would find a way to solve it because I kind of realised that if I didn't that was good night to a bunch of dreams and ambition that was growing in me that I actually would be the kind of guy that kept stepping up

that would be my limit I would grow to that point and no further if I didn't find a way to solve this problem so that was a really key moment in my life. Totally, totally because I guess in a sense probably without there was growing awareness but you were swimming in a sea of insecurity if you look at the stuff

you're doing with Campbell Page at the root cause of all of those issues with the people you're working with was insecurity you'd just been through five years of pain in your own business and you know often most people externalize this stuff and go well you know it was their fault it was a situation's fault it was someone else's fault what I'm if I'm threading something through all of your experiences so far you've got a real self-awareness there uh jayman that very very few people do or if they do it comes very late where did that self-awareness come from do you think uh that's a good question perhaps one of the gifts my parents gave me was just uh they did like asking questions they were naturally curious and they were they modeled a capacity to

handle questions so I think that's that always appealed to me early on uh and and I think the the pragmatic nature I developed that that required questioning to go okay could this work better and in order for something to work better you kind of got to review what's not working that well so I think I invested in that idea and kept growing the the awareness piece because it kept getting me more of what i wanted and uh it kind of came to see it as a central part of growing up and becoming an adult was the ability to to kind of know yourself well that's a that's a great sort of um transition right into the heart of the subject now because there's there's insecurity over everything that we've been talking about in the last 20 minutes uh i'd love now to sort of

delve into that because uh you know i've felt for some time that it's the ill of the age uh that you know if you trace a lot of uh problems in the world and it's always been this way too by the way whether it be uh you know dictators let's let's look at hitler most insecure person i reckon that ever walked the planet uh you look at all if you look at uh health issues obesity smoking drinking, addiction, drugs, workaholics, just about every addiction and ism that we have can eventually be traced back to some form of personal insecurity. I'd love for you to talk about that subject now and define what is insecurity in your terms and talk to us about some of the symptoms and some of the pain and the issues that flow from it.

Yeah, yeah, okay. I think that the simplest definition would be a fear of it, a fear that you have to be exposed as not being enough. So this fear that if you were to fully show up, present, then everyone would see the things that are single lacking and that's that's the height of insecurity so you're right it shows up in all kinds of ways and I think insecurity unaddressed leads to madness it's all that can happen it weakens us significantly and causes all kinds of dysfunction so it makes us show up at our

worst where it matters most and I think you're right I think our world leaders are some of the more insecure people that we see uh i think you know without being political i think jacinta adan one of her uh from the little that i know and see about her she seems to be one of the more secure leaders in the world she seems more confident there's less agenda around stuff to prove and more common sense in her ability to just address issues whether you agree with her the way she addresses them or not, she's much more believable and relaxed, whereas other political leaders are so much spin and guff and game-playing, all driven by deep insecurity.

Yeah, I 100% agree. She's comfortable on the skin, and that's the defining mark for me. And again, you'll know a lot more about this subject than I do, But when you come across someone who's comfortable in their skin and therefore doesn't really care what other people think or say, doesn't expect everyone to agree with them, actually anticipates it and sometimes actually enjoys the conversation that happens around the differences and then celebrates them. It's pretty rare. It's pretty rare, mate. It's incredibly rare, but it's beautiful. and I think the people who make the biggest contribution

to the world do so from a place of deep security. They do so from a place of presence with nothing to prove and nothing to defend and that's always been so magical and I see that. That's always just, I find that so compelling and I want that for myself and I want that for others and so that's caused me to go, right, well, how does anyone solve this problem? I'm not interested in managing it.

I'm not interested in just dealing with it the best I can. i want to solve it and i'm convinced that some people have found a way to do that so i think my life's work has been around deconstructing and making explicit that process for how people have done it throughout time how they've found a way to show up unhindered by doubt fear and insecurity so they can be at their best where it matters most rather than descending the madness the great word unhindered i love that word because there's very few unhindered people on the planet talk to us talk to us about then given you the your personal journey the work that you've uh done with people and and your reading and deep thinking that resulted in the great new

book that's just about to hit the hit the deck uh are you happy to share with us uh some of the things that the the listeners can do to start a one recognizing the insecurity and then and two working working through it yeah yeah 100 it's always a great honor to have this conversation on this subject because it's so important uh you know so i think that the start is uh is practice one is to step into the light so yoda says named must your fear be before banish it you can uh you know so not a complicated concept but a really hard one and a very important one So I think most people are not aware that their enemy is insecurity, that they see pain show up in their life and where they see the pain,

that's where they think the problem is. So they see health pain or relationship pain or finance pain or, you know, so that's where they think that's where their problem is. So they've got a relationship problem or a money problem and that's where they invest their time, energy and focus. But a bit of gentle inquiry would reveal that's just a symptom of a deeper issue. so i think practice one is around an accurate diagnosis and a real problem solving brain

is super useful just to hang on a minute what what problem are you most looking to solve right now are you sure that's the problem are you convinced that's actually the problem or is that just a symptom because until you deal with the core problem then you can never expect lasting change so i watch this in in how people deal with insecurity even their language around it it's so imprecise a lot of the time so uh you know for instance the calling calling insecurity of the imposter syndrome is not actually useful because it's an inaccurate bit of language it's very imprecise you know jordan peterson says be precise in your speech things that go unnamed become monsters and consume you so you know just just calling it the imposter syndrome gives it a

label and makes it a thing that's outside you uh i love that i love that and it's we're so good at doing that though now mate give it a give it a name and then then you externalize and it's not actually your issue anymore uh or you give it a name that doesn't really it makes it sound better than what it is yeah that's right you get to wear it as a badge absolutely so to the start is simply just get crystal clear be as absolute be as precise as possible around what the problem really is and and it turns out that uh like i i have this metric in my own problem solving framework about anything and i think um when i define a problem and and i think about the bottom of the problem if that problem feels overwhelming and like i don't know where to start to me that's really accurate

feedback that i just haven't accurately understood the problem yet yeah so the evidence that i've fully deconstructed the problem would mean that i know where to start and i can see the plan to solve this um so i think insecurity is no different at its deepest level you know the fear of being found out uh the the deepest level is it's always the personal implications of those fears so by what by way of example um you know i ask people what they're most afraid of and typically it's one of two things either fear of failure or fear of rejection generally that people fall into those two categories sometimes both yeah um but but that's where they stop in their awareness and so then they're paralyzed because they're like well i'm afraid of failure so everything i

do could fail so i don't really know if i should do it or not and it's a very difficult position to find themselves in or the same i'm afraid of rejection so there's always this tension around putting themselves out there um but it's an imprecise way of understanding the problem because it's avoiding the problem yeah because it's not actually the problem if you are afraid of failure if failure is the problem like that's that's that's very unhelpful because the only way to protect yourself from failure is to never try anything like and clearly that's not tenable clearly people who succeed in life try things that don't work out all the time yeah um and the only way to protect yourself from from rejection is to never have an opinion that's different never put

yourself out there you know so clearly again that's not the problem it's just one level deeper be precise the it's and if you were to fail or if you were to be rejected what would that say about you ah now it's personal you know that i am a failure or that i am not worthy of love you know so it turns out the more you examine insecurity what you are most afraid of is your own opinion of yourself which is which is staggering to frame it like that because the moment you understand that that's the problem, your own opinion of yourself, well, now you've got a way into solving it. Absolutely.

Does that make sense? It totally does. I'm sort of giving you plenty of space there because I think you're getting right on the nub of the exercise here. And the challenge is in, one, having the courage and the awareness to even recognize that. the next challenge then is how do you overcome your subconscious that that little thing that's been wearing away at the hundred times thousand in our conscious brain their conscious brain says

yeah i'm going to change this but the subconscious going no way mate i've been doing this for the last 50 years yeah yeah that's that's really it's really interesting because i think there is a window of opportunity um in my book i talk about the personal change bell curve and and kind of highlight peak readiness for change in my research peak readiness is is midlife so um there's a window of opportunity to do deep change work around your own opinion that doesn't exist forever i think it's it's probably impossible to do deep change work in your opinion in your 20s And I would go as far as to say that sometimes insecurity even serves you in your 20s because the drivenness to prove something means you're likely to not adhere to rules and expectations and barriers and you're going to go try what's beyond what's possible. I love that.

And you just described me, Matt. I was in such a gut-busting hurry to get everyone else to say I was okay because I didn't believe I was okay myself. So I just, absolute workaholic like you wouldn't believe. And yeah, it looked great on the outside. It looked awesome on the outside. Exactly. Didn't believe a thing of it. And you just had to keep working harder and running harder to try and keep fueling that limitless tank.

And then you hit a brick wall, which is what happened to me. I hit the brick wall. And then I had my Howard Hughes moments of two years of very deep reflection on how am I going to change it because I'm not going to end up back there again. well it's it's what happens because while it's useful in your 20s and that fuel is also poisonous so it is killing you at the same time and if you don't find a way to switch fuel source in midlife um if you're still being driven by the need to prove something into your 40s and 50s it's very ugly uh so but i think um so there's this window of opportunity you know 35 to 45 is peak readiness but it's a bell curve which means you know it's there's room for exceptions there

there are people who are ready at 25 and 55 and some are ready at 20 and 60 but they are the exception not the norm so i would say the longer you leave it the harder it is to change because we're evidence gathering machines and and i i'm sure we're all familiar with people late in their life who who are now uh you know that they they've embodied their insecurity or their insecurity has embodied them it's involved every cell in their body and you're not having a rational conversation with them their fears have owned them uh they've taken over to the point of so so it is it is high stakes but the point is the way into the conversation is essential there's only one way in and that's identifying that the problem the core problem is is your own

opinion of yourself um which is beautiful because if it's if it's your opinion well opinion you know we don't use the word opinion for fact or universally verified truth. Opinions is the lowest form of knowing. So the reality is when I cover this with people, the opinion problem often started when they were young and it's just never been addressed. It's never been reviewed. So, you know, I worked with a guy who in his mid-40s,

massive fear of rejection, seen a bunch of relationships ending in tears, he's got all this evidence that people reject him and he traces it back to his parents being divorced when he was four um you know thinks he's a victim of that experience and understands that they rejected each other and they rejected him and so that's why he's afraid of rejection turns out that's not true it turns out that when that happened he had to make sense of it you know the two sense making questions are why did that happen and what does it mean about me yeah so in every experience whether we're consciously aware of it or not from the moment

we have any conscious awareness we are asking and answering those two questions why did it happen what does it mean about me and so in that moment of turmoil as a four-year-old he's personalized that experience formed an opinion that that was his fault that somehow he attracted that caused that which therefore makes him dangerous to the people that he loves so he's formed this opinion at four it's gone unreviewed for the next 40 years and as you would imagine created havoc in his life yeah yeah and it's so true mate i've i've seen that as well and in you know kids because the world revolves around kids because that is their world then then they are the the start and the cause of everything and if something major like

that occurs and that they are going to blame themselves and then they will carry it. Yeah, that's an awesome insight. Sorry, mate, I interrupted. Well, no, that's – yeah, that's exactly right. It's so true. So it's unavoidable that kids will form opinions. Like when you think about the opinions a kid forms on their best day

are going to be crazy, let alone their worst day. So it's – of course we're going to develop limiting beliefs. That is inevitable. Even like I love having coaching conversations with people who describe that they had perfect parents because even perfect parents don't prevent children from picking up limiting beliefs. Yeah.

Like we're the storyteller. We're not the actor. We're the one with the pen and paper, you know, deciding what things mean. You know, so practice one is to name the problem and fully own that that's actually what you're fighting against. It's to turn all the lights on, do an accurate assessment of where is here.

And then from there, it's just to practice towards 100% responsibility, which sounds cliche, but the simple idea is, you know, once people identify that they have a low opinion of themselves and that's the problem, they typically want to blame someone for that opinion. Yeah. And they think, oh, yeah, that makes sense. I know I've got a low opinion because this happened

or that didn't happen or this was said or that didn't, you know, It wasn't said, you know, but just this simple understanding of human psychology is that we are the storyteller. We're not the actor. So Don Miguel Ruiz, in his book, The Four Agreements, he says no one has the power to bless us or curse us without our permission. Like we, our life is shaped by the agreements we make with words.

So it's not that someone said you're stupid. It's that when they said you were stupid, you agreed. Yeah. You know, so that is incredible because it just means rather than taking 100% responsibility, you kind of realise you already are responsible. You already are the one writing the story. You've always been writing the story.

So you know how to tell stories. You've been telling them your whole life with some awareness and some coaching. You could write some new stories. You could deconstruct those old ones, go back and review the data, explore those opinions find out where the where the gaps were in the holes and brighten your opinions yeah yeah yeah and that and by taking responsibility for that uh you know that as soon as you're pointing the finger at something or someone else then then you're not doing any more

work because if the issue is with someone else it's not with you no and it makes sense i mean i say to people all the time you're well within your right to blame the people who've hurt you and ripped you off and used and abused you, and no one can say that's the wrong thing, that you shouldn't blame them, no one. The only deficiency with blame is that it just gives you no power to improve your situation. So all change starts and ends with responsibility instead.

Yeah, I love that. Yep, so once you've taken responsibility, where do you go from there? Yeah, so one is step into the light, two is responsibility, three is to stack the pain. So pain, all change or deep lasting change comes from a point of great pain. This is why, this is how people smoke. Like I've often been fascinated.

How in today's world, knowing what we know about cigarettes, can people still smoke? You know, governments put grotesque images on packaging. There's billboards, there's ads. You know, how can people smoke? And the answer's very profound. uh i don't know whether you've considered this but it's just because we don't have to pay attention to everything we get to choose what we pay attention to so it's possible to ignore the

cost of smoking and to focus on the benefit and if you do then you'll continue however the people that quit they pay attention to some different stuff they do an accurate cost assessment realize that it's costing you more than it's giving them that creates a massive pain response every cell in our body is hardwired to move away from pain so therefore they have a higher level of motivation to do whatever it takes just to quit smoking yeah i love that because it comes back to the power of the story again because if the the story in the head is more focused on the pleasure of the smoking than the the quite obvious pain then the pain can be overlooked it's uh yeah it's pretty powerful that's very powerful well the thing is insecurity is exactly

the same just because something's killing you doesn't mean you have to pay attention to that so people who change this actually stop and do an accurate assessment of the impact of unresolved insecurity in their life and they realize it's horrific they realize it's ruining everything they realize that it might have served them in their 20s now it's making a mess you know if you haven't resolved insecurity into your 40s now you're an insecure wanker like now you're not fun to be like it's you know i mean like you're that guy you're that that guy is needy and insecure and always got to be the center of attention and like it's no fun for anyone let alone you so to stop and notice that it's painful yeah that's the point and pain's a

beautiful gift designed to move you away from danger towards safety so people everyone who's ever solved this problem has done so because they've stacked pain um what a great expression man i've never heard that before pain is a beautiful gift that that is a a great way to reframe that pain is actually the trigger for for positive change that's that's that's awesome yeah so so that's three four is the other side of motivation because if it's just a pain avoidance strategy the moment you make change and the pain dies down and so does the motivation so Anthony Robbins teaches this you've also got to have a moving towards strategy not just a moving away so practice four is to have a compelling life vision so I alluded to this when I was

talking about being chaplain because I had a vision for what I wanted that gave me a reason to do the hard work give me a reason to change my story a reason to walk into fear a reason to confront some underlying limiting beliefs yeah so um you know the hero's journey is a classic example of this the hero in order to risk life and limb they've got to have a quest there's going to be something compelling they're trying to do or achieve otherwise what's the point like why is frodo facing orcs and you know all kinds of horrible things if he's not trying to do something meaningful it just doesn't make sense yeah so this process grinds to a halt very rapidly the moment someone loses sight of why and what they're trying to achieve and what their life is

really about and um yeah i want to jump into this one because this this this compelling life vision is is something that we spend a lot of time working with our clients on and you know i So the first question I ask people when we catch up with them, Jamie, is tell me about – describe your ideal life to me. What does it look like? And nine out of ten people would say, gee, Bushy, I've never thought about that before. Yeah.

It's amazing. It's amazing because it's – you know, we help with people with property and finance, but there's no point even worrying about property and finance if you've got no idea whether – how's that going to help you? How's that going to get you to where you ultimately want to be, how you ultimately want to live, how ultimately you want to make a dent in the universe? How do you take them through that process? Because that's a very challenging process for a lot of people. Well, the way I think about it is the what do you want question.

It's the question that the kids desire, like young kids, they're ready for that question. But a responsible parent does not trust a child with the what do you want question. because they're going to do all kinds of crazy stuff. They're like, no, no, trust me, obey me. No, you can't have your iPad all night. No, you can't eat junk food. No. So they kind of gradually release more of that question to them.

Yeah. So it's the question that kids desire but are not ready for, but it's the question that adults are ready for but don't want. By the time you get to the real world, like I'm always fascinated by asking you 12 kids, what do you want? and none of them know. It's like you ask the year three kids what they want and they all know but five or six years later they've worked out

that's not how the world works. You don't get what you want. You settle, you survive, you fit in, you don't stick out. It's dangerous knowing what you want because then that can set you up for failure and rejection and disappointment. Wow. That's at year 12. You're saying that at year 12.

That's amazing. Oh, 100%, 100% at year 12. They've already decided it's safer not to know what you want. so you know i would say that's the way the world works there's only less than five percent of the world's population who know what they want and 95 who don't know what they want just help the five percent get what they want but like that's that's how it works um however to desire is human so each of us do have an idea of the ideal it's just because of insecurity people kind of shut it down because it's too dangerous so i think the way i i address it with people is to explain the

big picture of how it is part of being a human being and why it is the most dangerous but the most important question the whole world and so it's about uncovering it again going back into that dream space um knowing that it's dangerous but knowing that it's also beautiful and and the more permission they give themselves to go there the more clarity emerges around that and the more strength that vision you know gives them and then more motivation and then the process continues yeah it's a self-feeding and self-reinforcing mechanism i'm one of those vision board nuts mate when i had my car crash in my mid-30s uh you know i really sat down and reflected on how do i want to live what contribution do i want to make how am i going to help and uh and i revisit that

every year now and it's very empowering and and quite amazing how effective it's been actually in in completely flipping my lid and and and keeping me focused on the things that that are important so um yeah great certainly something that i'd love people to embrace uh and uh we would love to talk to you after chat today about about more of that because i think that that that purpose piece has a um and the hope that goes with that has some very healing uh possibilities across the board but uh i i digress mate so yeah the compelling vision is a is an awesome step to start moving moving towards as you say which is a great expression once that once someone has a feel for what that looks like where to from there uh yeah sure so practice five is to get help from

someone who doesn't care about you and so that kind of sits over the whole model um but at some point you're going to need to seek out a wisdom character that's a central theme of every hero's journey there's always a gandalf a yoda a dumbledore a mr miyagi because it turns out we need help and so that's really important to realize you know you can't just do this on your own because you need objectivity you need wisdom you need someone who can hold the space for you but the point is so many people in the coaching counseling psychology space that confuse the world about who the hero is yeah they want to whatnot the damn thing themselves yeah so it's it's a little challenging to find the right person but but they do exist and they're people that hold

the space without getting in the way and uh they provide a high level of objectivity which is essential to break a story because you think the story's true but it's just a work of fiction and it's so hard to get outside of your own head with enough distance to look back in and see the holes in your own story so and then i guess what goes with that is that a partner or another family member or someone who's very close to you isn't the right person for exactly those reasons because they've got a vested interest and and their emotion is going to get in a way that objectivity exactly right yeah they they care for you and they so they should because they they do have a vested interest but they're not going to be the people that help you change um so then so then

that's practice five practice six is to go be the hero so at some point uh you the hero's actually got to go do the thing that they're most afraid of like so you know frodo's actually got to go throw the ring in the lake of fire daniel sun's actually got to go fight the bully you know that the hero's got to go be the hero so in the context of insecurity at some point you've got to go face this deep fear are you good enough or not and plumb the depths of it like this monster that's been taunting you saying no you're not good enough there's something missing and we've got to go find out if that's true or not um so this journey is always toward the thing you're most afraid of which is your own opinion of yourself but there's only one way of finding

out if it's true and that's to fully go there um when you get there it's just like the wizard of oz and you know it's all smoke and mirrors of course you've always been enough but no one can tell you that you've got to find the date yourself so a big part of the the hero work is the origin is to fully deconstruct all the opinions all the agreements all the stories all the beliefs you've formed about yourself throughout your life uh so there's some work to do and and it's it's honest work and hard work but beautiful work going back and just analyzing the data of your life and reviewing the meaning in stories um and and it's the work that the the wisdom character prepares you well for but can't do for you yeah yeah and uh and then finally practice seven is to rewrite

the story so i find people hearing this model often want to rush to practice seven and go i i get it um surely we don't need years of therapy surely you know i don't need to go back into the dark past can't i just write some affirmations on my mirror and um you know tell myself how awesome i am but you know you can do whatever you like uh however without if you don't deconstruct the old story first um the writing piece becomes a behavior management exercise it's it's futile and the moment you get tired or anxious or something doesn't work out the old narrative just takes over as it always has yeah you're back to where you started so um it is essential to to clean the space deconstruct the old story render it nonsensical before you can

use that pen and paper again and write the script the way you'd like it to be and then better no i mean i the work you described me again there i did all the affirmations and all of fun stuff and and all the rest of it and then kept finding that i was sort of reverting back and then it wasn't till i did some some deep hypnosis work that really really dug into the subconscious where all of that habitual thinking was embedded because the the surface stuff that i was doing was wasn't really getting back to the core that that things started to move in the right direction so so yeah rewriting the story there's some there's some deep and hard work that needs to be done there and i don't think it's a one-hit wonder either i'd be interested in your thoughts on

this it's a it's a constant exercise you've got to keep working at this am i right sure well yet my distinction would be it is possible entirely possible to solve insecurity at your current level of growth and to show up unhindered where you are yeah however when you show up unhindered at your current level of growth the natural implication of that is you will move forward you will take new territory and you'll move into new levels of uncertainty which will uncover new levels of insecurity so that's no problem because it just means the same seven practices that got you unhindered the last level of growth will be the same set of practices you use again yeah so that's how i would say it's not evidence that you've regressed it's evidence of

growth yes um and it's the same process every time but i love that and in the uncertain dynamic constantly changing world that uh we're all now in together as a result of uh what's happened in recent months and and we'll continue to i think the speed of uncertainty and change is is here to stay with us it's only going to increase not the other way around then having a framework like you've just described in so much great detail as a way of tackling that and continuously uh you know sharpening the sword so that we can function and and perform in the world is is brilliant mate you've done some awesome work around that and i'd really appreciate you going into that detail to sort it just the the name of the because the book's just about to come out just just

refresh this mate so that the the guys now they've got a taste of that can go out and grab it it's called unhindered the seven essential practices for overcoming insecurity and that it hasn't quite hit the decks yet has it they can pre-order on your website is that right I think I'll have it back Friday, the 17th, so it's not far away at all. Maybe by the time this podcast is live, it may be out. It will be out. That's brilliant, mate. Mate, I want to transition now into what I call the ambush series,

which is just the five quick questions that the readers always love to share your wisdom on. and you've given us some great ones already that are probably your quotes during the discussion but what's your favourite quote and why, Jamin? So this one from Peter Drucker has been stuck in my head for at least the last six months and I just think it's staggering. It's beautiful.

So he says, productivity in my experience consists of not doing anything that helps the work of other people but to spend all one's time on the work that the good Lord has fitted one to do and to do well. So it's a really counterintuitive idea but one I've just found so much solace in, especially writing my book in the last three months because I feel like I've been hiding in a cave. But that's what I've been doing.

It's like this is your mission. This work is important work. It's your work to do. Don't worry about what anyone else is doing. just just do your work run your race and and bring bring a gift to the world out of the essence of who you are so that's that's a very meaningful quote to me at the moment yeah i love it and and you know that this has been the blessing of the contagion for me mate is that it's created opportunities like this that you probably would i mean the book's probably been a work in progress

for quite some time but suddenly there's a window of opportunity there where you can really burrow down and get your teeth into what a great thing that that's just a it's exactly that was a gift for me, 100%. That's brilliant, mate. Now, you've just mentioned your own book, which I'm loving what we're hearing. There's some really unique thinking in that. So I'm going to be one of the first people lining up to grab a copy, mate. But what's the top book, apart from that, that you'd recommend people read and why?

It's a tough one, but I'd probably say The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. the tagline of that book is it says a book of wisdom and uh i can vividly remember flying flying that was a good memory i can't wait to fly again but yeah anyway i was flying to melbourne reading the book and felt like i had a deeply spiritual experience while reading it um which i think that's what wisdom is supposed to do it's supposed to impact every every cell in your being And I just think the way that he described such simple ideas but with such depth and such beauty, to me, that is a must-read. It's such an exquisite book, only a little book but a very powerful book.

I haven't read it, mate, so I'm an absolutely rabid reader, so that goes straight on the Kindle list, mate. Thank you very much. That's a cracker. Now, this one feels like a bit left field, but it's something that constantly raises its head with a lot of the listeners because a lot of Aussies feel they pay too much tax. What's the top legal thing that you've done

to minimise the tax that you pay, Jamin? I've hired a Greek accountant. He loves it. He loves finding tax advantages, loopholes, all legal, legal but um he just froths over that kind of stuff so that's been my great decision just to find someone who just he's excited that's saving tax and to let him find anything he can do for me so i don't really know everything that he does but i know he does a great job and i don't pay very much tax there you go now that's when that's the best answer i reckon because a really good

accountant who knows uh he's creative but but within within the letter of the law can't get any better on that. Mate, back on the investment subject, and this is broad in the investment area, what's both the worst and the best piece of investment advice that you believe you've received today? Oh, boy, I think I got caught up in some get-rich-quick schemes early on. So the advice was, look, they're a great opportunity, and they weren't great opportunities. They were shonky, and I should have known but got caught up in the hype of fast returns and quick gains.

Yeah. So I don't know. Look, I think the best investment advice I've ever received is that you yourself are your greatest asset. So the investment you make in your own life, that'll be the thing that pays the biggest dividends. It'll improve the quality of your marriage, your relationship with your kids, your health, the friendships.

you'll be nicer to be around, you'll leave more of a legacy. So I think that is something that I think about very dearly to keep growing who I am as a person and to invest in my own growth and development as the number one priority. Yeah, yeah, love that, mate. Absolutely right. And sort of indirectly revolve that but it's sort of – it's the day-to-day stuff. What's a personal habit that you believe contributes most to your success today?

um habit habit is not a word that i particularly love because of its connections to discipline so i think self-discipline is motivation 1.0 i think it's a young man's strategy i think self-permission is uh is motivation 2.0 and so i i love the word rituals rather than habits um so so rather than forcing myself to do something that I don't really want to do but I know I should do it's I had I give myself permission to go where the life is um so I would say rituals that that are consistently add value to my life um would be um you know time at the start of the day to to ask myself what i want um around good food good coffee good music so those rituals that just put me in a great state and i've always so life-giving and i've definitely

added incredible value to my life over the years yeah and that's you've just uh i've never actually thought about it in your the power of words is uh it it can change worlds uh i'm actually going to change uh that question from now on to what's a what's a personal ritual mate because i at you're right that the connotation of habit is that is the should part of it which which is you know we're doing it because we have to not because we want to whereas a ritual is something that we enjoy doing yeah that's a great reframe thank you my friend that's uh yeah that's very good actually uh mate the final question and it's going to be a great summary of everything that we've spoken about today, but if I gave you a microphone that spoke to every single one of the 7.7

billion people that are currently enjoying the world and I gave you a minute to talk, what would you say? I've been thinking about this. You did preempt this question at the start because I wouldn't want to tell everyone in the world about insecurity because I think it is a conversation for midlife, really. and so so i would i would have a conversation about going where the life is and and uh this ability to go inward and explore who you are and to listen to the sense of life inside you and to be accustomed to what is life giving and move toward that and away from what produces death

i think that's it's such a an intuitive piece but everyone has that internal compass around what what is life as opposed to what is death it's different what's right and wrong and what's good and bad i think it's a it's a more useful metric and that would be good for the planet if we'd all move closer toward life and further away from death yeah great way to put it mate because uh But, you know, again, the good and bad has judgment attached to it because who decides what's good and what's bad? Whereas life and death, well, they are, aren't they? You're either moving towards life or you're heading towards death.

So which one do you want to choose? That's a great way to come back and reframe that essential question of, well, what do you want? Mate, you really got us thinking today. and I love the conversation, you've been very generous with your time Jamin, for those who want to reach out to you and either learn more or do more with you, how do they do that? Yeah, so if you Google the Insecurity Project you'll find my podcast

you'll come across my website where you can grab a copy of one or both of my books otherwise on the socials it's Jamin Fraser That's J-A-E-M-I-N, Fraser with a Z. Not too hard to find at all. Brilliant, mate. Been very generous with your time, mate. Really enjoyed it.

I'm going to talk to you again because there's a lot there that I could keep talking about for hours, but really appreciate your time, mate, and I know that we're really getting the audience thinking long and hard about some of the challenges they've got in their lives at certain stages, particularly in midlife and the opportunity now that they have before them to start digging into that and improve some things. So thanks again.

Yeah, my absolute pleasure. Thanks, mate. Well, Freedom Fighters, how good was that? To get a summary of all this investment gold in the show notes, just email me on hello at khgroup.com.au. It's H-E-L-L-O at khgroup.com.au. or check us out at www.bushymartin.com.au forward slash GetInvested.

I look forward to joining you next week for another episode of the GetInvested podcast. So thanks for listening. And as always, dream as if you live forever and live as if you die tomorrow.