Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Zoe Lynam on pushing beyond the limits

Episode Date: December 10, 2021

Are you a healthy striver for excellence or an extreme, paralysed perfectionist? Perhaps we need to reframe perfectionism, not as a destructive intolerance for failure, but rather we redefine perfectionism as a willingness to do what is difficult, to achieve what is right. To pursue the our best selves in the most healthy way possible. A great example of this is our guest Zoe Lynam.  Zoe is one of those few high energy high achievers that you meet that instantly inspires and motivates you to do great things, just as she has done and continues to do. As you’ll hear in our great discussion, for as long as she can remember Zoe has been driven to succeed by an intrinsic motivation that overpowers any external motivating factors. And as you’ll hear, her achievements have been considerable and many over the years, from making the under 21s Australian Netball team, to making the Australian Olympic rowing team just four years after taking up the sport despite suffering a number of major injuries on the cusp of major events.  To put this in context, rowing is recognised as one of the hardest sports in existence and ranked in the top 10 most physically demanding sports in the world. And despite this gruelling all consuming athletic endeavour, she successfully studied to become a lawyer and is about to become the CEO of a professional services firm. Zoe’s commitment and endurance is awe inspiring along with her ability to overcome adversity by investing in things that she really cares about. And like me, she has an awesome supportive partner who brings balance and irons out the perfectionist tendency kinks.  So if you want to embrace and be inspired with all of the benefits of healthy striving, and push your limits to achieve more than you could ever have imagined while still maintaining balance and perspective, enjoy this great motivating conversation with Zoe Lynam. Zoe's book recommendation: I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes Join the Get Invested community: And if you want to continue investing in your knowledge, join me and many other like minded investors in our Get Invested community right now. I send a free and exclusive monthly email full of practical ‘Self, Health and Wealth’ wisdom that our current Freedom Fighter subscribers can’t wait to get each month. It’s full of investment and lifestyle tips, my personal book recommendations, apps I use to enhance life and so much more. Just visit bushymartin.com.au and sign up at the bottom of the page … because this is just the beginning! Get Invested is the leading weekly podcast for Australians who want to learn how to unlock their full ‘self, health and wealth’ potential. Hosted by Bushy Martin, an award winning property investor, founder, author and media commentator who is recognised as one of Australia’s most trusted experts in property, investment and lifestyle, Get Invested reveals the secrets of the high performers who invest for success in every aspect of their lives and the world around them. 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.

you push and push and push. I think, you know, perfectionism, it's an interesting place to be as someone who sort of strives for that because there are certainly, you know, pros and cons to perfectionism and I don't really know if you can sort of enjoy it on one sense without sort of going through the cons on the other side. You know, when I look at it, again, I think it was always there. And I think as I then moved through my education and then moved through sport, it was just this sense of needing sort of wanting to achieve more and needing things to be just right. Welcome to the Get Invested podcast, where we share great conversations with experts from all walks of life to uncover their secret know-how and 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, and 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 bushymartin.com.au forward slash GetInvested. Thanks for listening, and now, let's get invested. Hi Freedom Fighters.

Why do we have such a constant desire and need to do bigger, better and faster? Where does this incessant need to push and push and push the boundaries come from? Why do we constantly seek perfection? And what is perfectionism anyway? And when do we cross the line from healthy striving to unhealthy perfectionism? this is a subject that constantly plagues me why do we constantly strive for perfection where does this drive come from why because the invisible gravitational pull of perfectionism is something that has dominated and plagued my life with a constant ebb and flowing mix of positive

and negative impacts and my conversation with today's special guest who's already achieved much more than most of us will get close to in our entire lifetimes, has rubbed the scab off my perfectionist wounds. So I thought today I'd tackle our drive for perfection head on. To explore perfectionism fully in terms of its benefits as well as its downsides. To try and understand when our push for perfection serves us and when it doesn't. You see, I'm a bit of a self-proclaimed perfectionist. As Thomas Curran observes, how many times have you heard that one? It now appears to be everyone's favourite four, and it's often the common response to that difficult final question of a job interview, what's your biggest

weakness? Well, of course, that's my perfectionism. You see, for something that supposedly holds us back, it's quite remarkable how many of us are quite happy and proud to say we're perfectionists. And it appears that our begrudging admiration for perfection has become so pervasive that we never really stop to question the concept of perfection. Just as an Olympic athlete strives to execute every move, hit every shot, catch every pass, or make every putt. Just as a concert pianist strives to hit every note. Just as a student taking an exam tries to get every answer correct. The thing is, nobody criticises athletes, musicians and entertainers for striving for perfection in performing their talents.

In fact, we celebrate and greatly admire and sometimes even idolise them. And nobody accuses them of having a disorder. So what does it say about us and our current Western so-called advanced society that there's an underlying celebration of perfection? We tend to hold perfectionism up as a kind of insignia of worth, the emblem of the successful. But is this actually true? Well, my perfectionist tendencies have been with me for as long as I can remember. And I've never really been able to figure out why. Even though from the outside looking in, I may appear to have achieved a lot in my life and now enjoy a great lifestyle.

I've always had this constant nagging voice in my head that what I do and what I've achieved is never really good enough I need to keep pushing to do better and achieve more every time I achieve something or do better I've got to raise the bar higher and do more in a never-ending escalation of self-expectation which means I'm constantly working harder and longer and often on the edge exhaustion and burnout. Now, these podcast introductions are a perfect case in point. The more I put into them and the better the feedback, the more I feel the need to put more effort into them in a never-ending cycle of self-induced pressure. So why am I and many others unconsciously and instinctively driven to push the limits in a never-ending

endeavour to strive for perfection? To always be focused on bigger, better, faster, even if the journey becomes all-consuming at the expense of all else, and the satisfaction of achieving the goal is fleeting and short-lived, like moths drawn to and engulfed in the flames. This reminds me of the poem by Don Marquis called The Lesson of the Moth, where the poet asks a moth why they fly into the flames, and the moth answers this way. We get bored with the routine and crave beauty and excitement. Fire is beautiful, and we know that if we get too close, it will kill us. But what does that matter?

It's better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while. That is what life is for. It's better to be part of beauty for one instant and then cease to exist than to live forever and never be part of beauty. This is the kamikaze fatal attraction of self-destructive extreme perfectionism where we're drawn instinctively to the flame of achievement only to burn out and burn up in the attempt.

So what is perfection? Well, the dictionary defines perfection as the state of which someone or something or maybe even some place is free of all flaws or defects. And how does this flow on to perfectionism? Well, Dr. Keith Gaynor defines perfectionism as this setting up and striving for very demanding standards that are self-imposed and relentlessly pursued despite causing problems. It involves basing your self-worth almost exclusively on how well these high standards are met.

Perfectionists tend to measure their self-worth almost exclusively on how we meet certain standards. now this results in your self-worth becoming very fragile as it's not easy to meet or maintain such high artificial standards as life inevitably throws something unexpected and uncontrollable in your way now i think alina miller captures my concept of perfectionism brilliantly in her blog so let me paraphrase it for you here she says perfectionism has been that perfect frenemy who's tagged along with me my entire life. On the surface, she's helped me to get stuff done right, but underneath, she was always there at the worst moments

to whisper cruel criticisms in my ear, no matter how hard I worked or how well I'd done. Applying this two-sided perfectionist coin to my life, it's helped me to achieve high grades in high school, yes, it's helped me to grow from a punk-chested, sickly asthmatic runt at the age of 11 with zero athletic ability, to captain coaching my uni hockey team to a record undefeated season win, and continue to play competitively for 49 years since as I approach my 800th game.

It's helped me to achieve first class honours in architecture as a top graduate and go on to win many design awards. It's given me the courage and the resilience to change careers, and it's driven me to start and grow a series of successful businesses. In fact, perfectionism has helped me enjoy a level of success at pretty much anything and everything I put my mind to. But at the same time, perfectionism has also been there to tell me that each of my accomplishments wasn't sufficient. That I should try harder to do more, to be better. Every time I've achieved something difficult, my perfectionist voice was whispering in my ear that this wasn't good enough

and I need to set my sights higher. A self-destructive cycle of endless self-criticism and endemic dissatisfaction. Perfectionism exists in the silent way that I used to berate myself for not being able to do certain things. It's this insidious belief that I used to entertain that all will be perfect and fine

if only I can be perfect and fine. So I used to procrastinate or over-prepare or over-plan or over-think conversations before and after I had them. I used to mentally beat myself up if I said or did something that didn't go perfectly to plan. But here's the perfectionist paradox. Because I can honestly say that I wouldn't have achieved what I have achieved in life if it wasn't for my perfectionism drive. But it's come at a great cost.

Where others are out enjoying life, I've spent most of mine working and I've sacrificed a lot of life's experiences in a constant endeavor to make my mark. So while something that at first seems positive and that we all strive for, it ultimately has the opposite effect when taken to the extreme as we attack ourselves and our sense of who we are and how we feel and our sense of self-worth. So sometimes when we strive for something excessively in the pursuit of perfection we actually end up hurting ourselves. We over worry and suffer low moods. Physically we feel overtired. We have poor sleep. We end up ruminating in our minds by going over and over things in what I call stinking thinking as we catastrophize

by making things seem much bigger and much more daunting than they need to be. so why are we caught in this endless pursuit of perfection well according to some it's all about life and death you see my dogs don't appear to be contemplating their purpose in life and they seem relatively well adjusted as they live entirely in the moment unburdened by mistakes of the past or anxious about the future so why then do humans constantly pursue perfection and push the limits. Perhaps it's the desire to perceive our lives as meaningful. According to social psychologist Dr. Clay Rutledge,

his explanation is that he has received a significant amount of scientific attention that relates to the human awareness of self and death. According to terror management theory, humans are like all other animals in that we strive to survive. Our bodies consist of systems that work to keep us alive. And as conscious beings, we deliberately engage in efforts to avoid death. We're motivated to live.

However, unlike other animals, humans are intelligent enough to realise that death is certain. That is, we're uniquely aware of our mortal nature. We understand that despite our best efforts to stay alive, death is inevitable. So in this regard, terror management theory asserts that this juxtaposition of a desire to live and an awareness of death has the potential to cause a significant amount of anxiety or terror and that humans need to manage this terror in some way.

We would not be a very productive species if we lived our lives in constant fear of death. Thus, according to the theory, we seek out a sense of enduring meaning that makes us feel more than mortal. In other words, we know our lives are brief, and so we endeavour to be part of something that transcends biological existence. This sense of death transcendence can come from having children, creating works that will leave a lasting legacy, investing in a group or organisation that outlasts the lives of any individual member, and so on.

So in short, heightening the awareness of death heightens our efforts to pursue perfection and break boundaries to find and preserve transcendent meaning. According to Dr Rutledge, a large body of research demonstrates that the realisation that life is finite is a potent driving force for our individual and collective efforts to strive for perfection in order to feel that our lives are purposeful and meaningful. We all want to be more than mere mortal beings who die and disappear forever without a trace. To feel meaningful by pushing the limits is to feel like we've made a lasting mark, a contribution that will endure beyond our deaths.

So to pursue perfection is to feel meaningful, which helps us feel immortal. In addition, I wonder if there are others like myself who operate on the basis that when someone says that something can't be done or is forbidden, it makes us want to do it more as a challenge to be overcome by attaining perfection. To me, I wonder if we strive for perfection because we know that it's impossible to completely achieve it. We unconsciously think that it'll feel better or more accomplished if we do fulfill a so-called impossible goal. So perhaps we do things that aren't attainable because they're just that, they aren't attainable. Our sole reasoning for perfection might differ because of our circumstances or our individual

personalities, but in the long run, we simply strive for perfection because we want to be the best that we can be to enjoy the satisfaction that goes with it, together with the immediate recognition and the lasting legacy that this level of achievement endows. And another one of the reasons that I'm focusing on our push for perfectionism today is that its occurrence appears to be coming widespread and increasing at a rapid rate. Again, social psychologist Thomas Curran has observed that the incidence of perfectionism is rising as society is changing and our sense of personal identity is changing with it, causing differences in the way we interact with each other and the world at large. Our Western liberal capitalist

market-based society, promotes individualism with unrestricted choice and total personal freedom. Characteristics that Karen believes are fostering the epidemic levels of the perfectionist problem. And he gives some good examples. A repetitive survey of Olympic athletes across the world revealed that over 50% of them would rather win a gold medal even if it came at the cost of their lives within five years. Now this is extreme perfectionism in action. And this reminds me of the myth of the thorn bird. There's a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any

other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest, it searches for a thorn tree and doesn't rest until it's found one. Then, singing among the savage branches It impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine And, dying, it rises above its own agony To out-carol the lark and the nightingale One superlative song

Its own existence The price But when it sings The whole world stills to listen And God in his heaven smiles For the best is only brought at the cost of great pain. Now many of us today, and particularly the young, are preoccupied with the attainment of their perfect life and lifestyle.

In terms of image, status and wealth, data shows that people born in the US in the late 1980s are 20% more likely than their parents and grandparents to report material richness as their most important life goal. Curran also confirms that young people also borrow much more heavily than prior generations and they spend a greater proportion of their income on image goods and status possessions. And these possessions are perceived perfect lifestyles, are increasingly on display in vivid detail on all our all-pervasive,

always-on social media platforms like Insta, Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok, etc. In this new visual culture, the appearance of perfection appears to be far more important than the reality, and it seems to be a self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing cycle. And as we blindly chase this mirage of the perfectible life and lifestyle, we're convinced that the only way to achieve it is by working harder and harder. At the heart of the notion of the Australian dream, which has grown out of the American dream, is the belief that nothing is out of reach if we want it badly enough. Opportunity, meritocracy, the self-made person, and underlying it all, hard work. The notion that hard work always pays off is certainly a driving concept that I've personally embraced for most of my life. The idea that we're captains of our own destiny. And these ideas connect our pursuit of wealth, status and our image

with our innate personal value. And this is where the extreme perfectionist danger kicks in. Because this incessant drive for bigger, better and faster has created an intricate system of measuring sticks that starts at school where metrics, rankings and lead tables have emerged as the yardsticks for which merit can be quantified and used to grade people into schools, classes and universities. as tools to improve standards and performance.

And this all starts young, as the pursuit of perfection becomes ingrained in our psyches. As evidence of this, according to Curran, young people in American high schools take about 112 mandatory standardised tests between pre-kindergarten and the end of year 12. So it's no wonder that most of us report a strong need to strive, perform and achieve as central to our modern life.

We've been conditioned to define ourselves in the strict and narrow terms of grades, percentiles and lead tables. Constant comparison and resulting judgment and criticism are the natural outflows of this approach. And this is the perfect breeding ground for perfectionism, where constant striving and measurement preys on our insecurities about how we're performing and how we appear to other people. An environment that actually amplifies our imperfections, where every flaw or unforeseen setback increases our need to perform more perfectly next time or else we're

considered a failure. That constant underlying pervasive feeling that we're flawed and deficient. we're under constant pressure to always be doing better. And this is where those of us who harbour inherent perfectionist tendencies get ourselves into trouble. Because despite popular belief, striving perfection isn't about perfecting things. It's not about striving for excellence. If we're really honest, it's about perfecting ourselves,

or more precisely, perfecting our imperfect self. now my case right from a very early age when i was bedridden with asthma and spent most of my days drawing and designing things for years on end my role model was leonardo da vinci and his concept of the universal man a renaissance concept of an individual respected for advanced skills across all fields of knowledge where a man can do all things if he will as alberti said at the time. At that formative age, I fully embraced the ideal embodied in the basic tenets of Renaissance humanism, which considered humans to be at the centre of the universe, limitless in our capacities of development, and led to the notion that we should try to embrace

all knowledge and develop our capacities as full as possible. In other words, the belief that you can be perfect at everything if you just set your mind to it and work hard enough to achieve it. This ideal led me to think about life like a mountain of achievement that my pursuit of perfection imagined myself scaling continuously. I kept telling myself that once I've reached the summit, then others will no longer see me as flawed and I'll finally be worth something. But here's the rub. This flawed perfectionist approach forgets to tell us that once we've reached our mythical summit, we're then dragged down again by our insecurity and shame, and we start scaling the peak again, creating a never-ending cycle of self-defeat.

In the pursuit of unattainable perfection, we can't just step off the mountain, which is why my habitual perfectionism has been so difficult to overcome. Every time I used to get knocked down from the mountaintop, I could see no other option but to try scaling that unattainable peak again. and interestingly as i describe in my book the freedom formula the ancient greeks knew that this endless struggle up and down the same mountain is not the road to happiness their image of hell was a bad king called sisyphus who was doomed for eternity to keep rolling a massive boulder up the mountain only to see it roll back down again and have to start again so if we're going

to consider the positive and negative impacts of perfectionism, it's important to start with a definition of what perfectionism actually is. And according to the dictionary, perfectionism is a disposition to regard anything short of perfection as unacceptable. In applying this approach, there are some cases when this may be a problem and others when it may not be a problem. In fact, perfectionism may help people achieve a high level of success. For example, the tennis player Serena Williams attributes her success to being a perfectionist, and she sees it as a good thing. So perfectionism isn't necessarily a problem, but it can be a problem depending on its extent and its impacts. Another definition by psychiatrist David Burns is that a perfectionist is someone whose standards are high beyond reach or reason,

and who strains compulsively and unremittingly toward impossible goals and who measures their own worth entirely in terms of productivity and accomplishment. So under this much tighter definition, perfectionism is a problem as the person suffering from it is measuring their entire self-worth in terms of whether they meet and or maintain their unattainable standards. now my experience i see perfectionism as being on a spectrum it's not a binary state where you either have it or you don't and it's not a fixed permanent condition levels of perfectionism can vary with the situation the circumstance and the individual so it's largely a self-perception

so according to martin antony who wrote the book when perfect isn't good enough the key questions you need to ask yourself if you feel you have perfectionist tendencies, is whether your perfectionism is a problem, and if it is, in what areas is your perfectionism a problem? Then explore these flow-on questions. Are your standards higher than others around you? Are you able to meet your standards? Do you get upset if you don't meet your standards or if others don't meet them? Do your standards help you achieve your goals or do they get in the way? What would be the costs and benefits of changing your standards? I believe that a level of perfectionism can be helpful,

but once it extends beyond a certain extreme level, then it creates more problems than it solves, and detracts from other important but neglected areas of your life, like your relationships, relaxation and leisure. So where are you on the perfectionist spectrum? If you're on the extreme end of the perfectionist spectrum, what can you do to improve things? Well again according to Martin Antony you can work on altering your thinking and altering your behavior. In terms of your thinking many extreme perfectionists

suffer from all or nothing thinking. A tendency to see things in black or white or a tendency to see things as either right or wrong. For example an extreme perfectionist is likely to think that if you've eaten a cookie you might as well eat the whole packet as you've blown your diet. there's nothing in between and according to Anthony with extreme perfectionists there's nothing in between you must always do things a certain way you should always do things in a certain way your language is dominated by should statements and must statements this is what psychologist Albert Ellis quite humorously describes as shooting on yourself or masturbation I quite like that one. So if this incessant pursuit of perfection is ingrained in many

of our psyches, is perfectionism a good thing or a bad thing? Well, according to an article by Jessica Stillman, some professionals argue that yes, perfectionism is a good thing in holding and attaining high standards, while others say it's a bad thing as perfectionism can lead to a paralyzing fear of failure, which is not good for your productivity or your mental health. So who's right? Well, new research offers a very surprising answer. Maybe both are right. Analysis of perfectionism studies by Professor Andrew Hill reveals there are two types of perfectionism, one good and one very bad. The difference between the two comes down to whether a perfectionist's standards for him or herself are just high or impossibly

high. If you're setting yourself up for continual failure by setting the bar so high that no human could ever really achieve it, then that amounts to the wrong kind of perfectionism. Bad perfectionism is when people constantly worry about making mistakes, letting others down, or not measuring up to their own impossibly high standards. The consequences of this incessant sense of failure and worry are quite grim. Being this sort of perfectionist can contribute to serious health problems including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, fatigue and even early mortality. Or in other words, you can stress yourself into an early grave. And besides premature death, it also causes burnout, which is exactly what happened to me in my early 30s when my selflessly

focused, all-consuming perfectionism cost me everything that was important to me. Keeping my perfectionist tendencies at bay has been my greatest challenge ever since. Now, Brené Brown captures extreme perfectionism when she said to Oprah that when perfectionism is driving, shame is always riding shotgun, and fear is the annoying backseat driver. when perfectionism is driving shame is always riding shotgun and here is the annoying backseat driver and she goes on to say that perfectionism is a way of thinking that says this if i look perfect live perfect and work perfect then i can avoid or minimize criticism blame and ridicule in this way she sees perfectionism as a 20-ton shield that we carry around

hoping that will keep us from being hurt when in truth what it does is keep us from being who we really are and who we want to be. This is where Brené draws a clear distinction from being a healthy striver for excellence versus an unhealthy extreme perfectionist and the major difference between the two

revolves around what she calls a worthiness crunch where healthy striving is internally focused where you want to be the best you can be versus unhealthy perfectionism, where your external orientation means that you're more worried about what others think about you. So, while this sort of bad perfectionism seems downright scary, there's another type of perfectionism that isn't bad at all. If instead of constantly failing to meet your own expectations and perpetually fretting about it, you merely insist on giving your best, then there's nothing to worry about, according to Hill.

In fact, it's probably a professional positive. This aspect of perfectionism involves the setting of high personal standards and working towards these goals in a proactive manner. These efforts may help maintain a sense of accomplishment and delay the debilitating efforts of burnout, the study found. So, if you suspect you have perfectionist tendencies, it might be time for some serious soul-searching. If, upon reflection, you recognise yourself more in the description of good perfectionism,

just carry on doing what you're doing. But, if, on the other hand, you have to admit that the bad perfectionism sounds more familiar, research strongly suggests you should think about getting your impossible-to-place tendencies under control. So which are you? The good type or the bad? And what percentage perfectionist are you? well i did a quick quiz on buzzfeed.com forward slash perpetua forward slash what percentage perfectionist are you of course there's a website for everything now and it revealed that i'm now

currently at 40 perfectionist but prior to my early midlife crisis i was over 80 so do yourself a favor and do the quiz to find out where you lie on the perfectionist spectrum so you can then learn how to better manage it if you're at the extreme end. And it asks you some great questions like do you feel like there's a correct way to do everything? Do you stick to a recipe exactly when you're cooking? Would it bother you if you went out in public not dressed well?

Do you go out of your way to correct errors you make? Do you correct other people all the time in conversation? Do you find it hard to finish projects? Do small mistakes that you've made haunt you for a long time? Do you have a general all-or-nothing approach to life? Do you give up on strict self-implosed rules if you break them even just once? Do you take negative feedback very badly and interpret it as a harsh judgment of your entire being? Do you often beat yourself up over mistakes from your past, like many years later?

Do you define yourself by your accomplishments? do you find it hard to feel good about things that you do unless they are validated by other people's praise when other people do praise you do you sometimes write it off as them not noticing all the things that you actually did wrong do you worry about being mediocre and ordinary do you take pride in working more than other people do you procrastinate a lot do you avoid situations and activities where you may be awkward or unskilled? Have you ever had a quarter life or midlife crisis like myself? Do you find it hard to accept your successes because there's some greater success that you've yet to achieve? As long as we keep convincing ourselves that there's

nothing more real or meaningful in our lives than this hopeless quest for perfection, then we're going to condemn ourselves and future generations to this continuing futility and despair. So we need to ask ourselves some big questions. Is our society's heavy emphasis on competition, comparison, evaluation and testing really benefiting us? Unfortunately, I keep hearing many public figures condemning people by saying that all we need to do is buck up, grow some ghoulies and show more resilience in the face of the relentless, unprecedented pressures of escalating change. but this approach is washing our hands of our collective responsibility to create an accepting supporting society and a caring culture we're doing our best supersedes having to be the best

and the associated big question is when are we going to appreciate that there's something fundamentally inhuman about limitless perfection because none of us are flawless we need to constantly remind ourselves that to escape the downside traps of extreme perfectionism, we need to teach ourselves that in a constantly changing chaotic world, that life will often defeat us and that this is actually okay. Failure is not a weakness but merely a learning opportunity. If we want to help ourselves to outgrow our self-defeating snare of impossible perfection

we need to celebrate the joys and the beauties of imperfection as a normal and natural part of everyday living and loving. And this is perfectly captured in John Legend's ballad, All of Me, where he laments, Cause all of me loves all of you, love your curves and all your edges, all your perfect imperfections. But let's make sure that we don't throw the achievement baby out with the extreme perfectionist's bathwater, because we can't ignore our inherent and inescapable need and desire to pursue perfection in order to give our lives meaning, in order to cheat death by leaving a lasting legacy. So how do you achieve this? While dealing with extreme perfectionism,

we also need to deal with the opposite end of the scale of the growing culture where nobody fails and nobody is told that they will fail because nobody under those terms will reach their potential with this approach. As John Bowers so well says, failure and loss are critical for success. It's the acceptance of failure that's not. Michelangelo is credited with saying that the greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and that we miss it, but that we aim too low and we reach it.

We need to reframe failure as a motivating force, not an excuse to give up. So perhaps we need to reframe perfectionism not as a destructive intolerance for failure, but rather we redefine perfectionism as a willingness to do what is difficult and to achieve what is right, to pursue the healthy striving of excellence. In this light, we can embrace failure as a good thing in our quest for perfection. and when we start seeking perfection without fear of failure there's no limit to what we can accomplish. So as a recovering perfectionist this is where I'm going to end my mental meanderings on the subject and I'll be honest I feel that this introduction is imperfect. There's a lot

more I want to explore and say on this topic. There's a lot more research I came across when I was going down endless rabbit holes on the topic of perfectionism and I want to cover them all but I'm going to leave it here. Is it perfect? No. But hopefully I've got you thinking about the subject in a way that you can explore and question whether you're a healthy striver or an extreme paralysed perfectionist.

And a great example of a healthy striver for excellence is today's special guest, Zoe Lynham. Zoe is one of those few high-energy, high-achievers that you meet that instantly inspires and motivates you to do great things. just as she's done and she continues to do. As you'll hear in our great discussion today, for as long as she can remember,

Zoe has been driven to succeed by an intrinsic motivation that overpowers any external motivating factors. And as you'll hear, her achievements have been considerable and many over the years, from making the under-21s Australian netball team to making the Australian Olympic rowing team just four years after taking up the sport despite suffering a number of major injuries on the cusp of major events.

Now, to put this in context, rowing is recognised as one of the hardest sports in existence and ranked in the top 10 most physically demanding sports in the world. It requires a combination of strength and power coupled with exhaustive levels of cardiovascular endurance that challenges the extremes of physical and mental toughness of the competitors. It requires an entire body workout, exercising a multitude of muscles and resulting in lactic acid build up from head to toe that lasts for days after training. So rowing is a punishing physical and mental workout. And to be a successful rower, there are two vital mental qualities. The first is willpower that's driven by the mantra, can I hurt myself more than you can hurt you?

So in this context, it's very common for people to collapse in rowing because they're racing themselves to destruction. It's a sport, in short, for masochists. You've got to enjoy pain. And alongside willpower, the other crucial quality is concentration. So to be a good rower, you need a very competitive mind. If you don't have the right state of mind to focus and fight through or block out the pain, it's unlikely you'll be any good at rowing,

no matter how technically good that you actually become. And as Olympic legend rower Matthew Pinsett once said, when you're rowing, your senses are not in control anymore and they start to leave you. The hearing will go, the vision goes out of sync, there isn't much left. Your body starts to close down anything it doesn't need at that moment. It prioritises to the parts of the body that are in trouble, like your muscles suffering the agony of the row. And despite this gruelling, all-consuming athletic endeavour, Zoe has successfully studied to become a lawyer and is about to become the CEO of a professional services firm.

Zoe's commitment and endurance are awe-inspiring, along with her ability to overcome adversity by investing in things that she really cares about. and like me Zoe has an awesome supportive partner who brings balance and irons out the perfectionist tendency kinks so if you want to embrace and be inspired with all of the benefits of healthy striving and push your limits to achieve more

than you could ever have imagined while still maintaining balance and perspective then enjoy this great motivating conversation with Zoe Lynham Hi, Freedom Fighters. Now, as I've often said before, peak performance in professional sport is often a microism of success in everyday life. But nowhere is this put more to the test than the Olympics,

where superhuman levels of determination, discipline and durability combined with endless years of blood, sweat and tears are required just to compete, let alone win. So to deep dive into what it takes and what are the true costs and sacrifices both before, during and after competing in world-class sports and its flow and effects with everything beyond that, we're joined by an athlete who successfully navigated this perilous path, Zoe Lynham. So welcome and let's get invested, Zoe.

Thanks, Bushy. Really happy to be with you. Yeah, absolutely. I've been looking forward to catching up for a while because you've had an amazing journey And I guess for those that are involved in elite sport, they'd know you well, but there'll be a lot that haven't heard of Zoe Lynham. So can you start by telling us who you are, what you do, and most importantly, Zoe, why you do what you do?

Yeah, happy to, Bushy. So thank you. Yeah, I think a few people would know me, probably would know me under the name of Zoe Uphill, though, rather than Zoe Lynham, with Zoe Uphill being my maiden name and the name that I obviously used when I was an athlete. But look, I think, you know, who I am, I think first and foremost, I'm now a mum of two very gorgeous children.

You know, I'm a wife of a wonderful partner. I'm a lawyer, former Olympic athlete. I was obviously competed at the Beijing Olympics, but before joining the world of rowing, I was an elite netballer. So, we can have a chat about that and the transition between those two sports. But I'm now the CEO of a professional services firm headquartered in Canberra, but we're sort of based across the eastern seaboard with teams in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Melbourne.

That sounds like an extremely busy life right up until this point, Zoe, right there. So, I'd love to dive into that. So, I'd love you to take us back through your journey so far, if you don't mind, and go back as far as you'd like to, to talk through where you've invested your time, your energy and money, why you've done that, what you've learned from it, and how has that brought you to where you are today? Yeah, absolutely. Happy to.

I think, well, you know, going back, I was a kid that grew up in the town of Kiama, which some of your listeners might know. Back then in the early 80s, Kiama was very much a country town. I think it's a little bit different now. It's a couple of hours south of Sydney. But certainly back then, diesel trains and, you know, not a lot of access to the bigger cities. So, certainly grew up as a country kid on the coast. I think for me, you know, when I look back on those early years, I think I remember that I was intensely competitive from a very, very young age.

But only in relation to sport, I think it's, I'm certainly, you know, driven to succeed in every area of my life. But the competitiveness was fairly extreme when it came to sporting events. Yeah, let's delve into why. Where did that emerge? Can you think back to the time that you first thought that, yes, I'm out here to win? Yeah. Well, actually, it's a very interesting story. My husband often reminds me that every time I drive past this particular park in Kiama that I can't help but tell this story.

But I was six years old. I was in year one. and we had a cross-country at my local primary school and it was a lap around the oval and it was a lap around a park actually and the park had a rotunda and it had a slide and, you know, a swing set and I was told as a six-year-old to make sure I ran around the slide. Now, as an adult, you'd think, oh, well, that's just making sure you run around the outside of the slide.

But when someone said to me as a six-year-old, you need to run around the slide, I did exactly that. So I did the full lap and the slide was right at the end and I ran around the bottom of this slippery slide and I came fourth but I was winning. So what happened was I went round and they saw me go round and they said, no, no, no, no, no, just keep going but I'd already gone halfway around.

So then the people behind me beat me and I'll never forget it and I said to myself when I was a six-year-old, that's it. um there's no way that i'm ever losing a country race again and i didn't from them from the from year two to year 12 um i won every cross-country race i went in um so i think that's that's my that's my sort of recollection of of where that started i don't actually you know i don't sort of know where it came from but i knew that that i did not like to be beaten um and that was that was the start of um you know a journey that would last another 22 23 years yeah that well it's a there's a single-minded determination that i'm that i'm hearing there where else did that

evidence in itself uh in in those early days so yeah i think um i think too i i was i was that kid who was told by my parents you know you uh you need to make sure you eat your dinner and eat your vegetables and that sort of thing or you can just you know stay at the table so i would say okay i'll just stay at the table and i was the child who fell asleep you know um at the dining table because i was determined to not eat vegetables um so so there was this there was this theme um coming out that was certainly challenging for my parents and i know that my my father um you know certainly recalled many of those um instances to my husband when they first met and said, I'm not sure what you've got yourself in for here. But I think, you know,

in those early years, it was really around, you know, being, you know, certainly competitive in one sense, but sheer determination, you know, in another. And I think, too, for me, Bushy, there was also an element of fairness that I was really focused on when I was young. I think if I sort of moved to netball I started playing netball with at a certain club when I was quite young and just did not even as a really young person didn't see that things were being done in a fair way particularly at that age when no one's really that good at the game of netball and everyone just needs to be given a go and and I just and I noticed that from an early age and so I said to my parents I don't want to play with this this group anymore and I switched clubs

um so there was i think there were sort of key moments in my life um that that led to where i am now but even as a very young person you know i had that that sheer determination but also a really strong sense of of fairness and and what was right and wrong yeah let's delve into that fairness piece for a minute is that something that you uh that came from what you picked up from mom and dad or is it just an innate sense that's – I mean, I can see where that fairness would take you into the law, actually, in that context. Yeah. Yeah.

Have you thought through that at all? What's your thoughts around that? Yeah, I don't know. I think it was more innate. I think when we talk about, you know, nature versus nurture side of things, I don't sort of recall any particular instances from my folks when, you know, I was younger where that was a real focus and I think, yes, I think it's more intrinsic and I think for me, just as a person, intrinsic motivation has always been the driving factor

for me. It's always been something that has sat with me and I'm my own worst enemy. I'm certainly my own worst self-critic and I do things purely for the joy but, you know, also because I just feel that need internally. And I think the same thing with the fairness side of things. I think that, you know, I always viewed sort of, you know, equality and, you know, a fair go as really important parts of life, even when I was really young. And like you said, I think that was probably one of the reasons that I did move towards the law. But I haven't really thought critically about it but I think reflecting on it now it's probably more of an innate feeling than anything else. I guess I was laughing earlier because the similarities between your early journey and mine

are quite similar and I remember sitting at the breakfast table until lunchtime over porridge I just couldn't do porridge never have never will it's like it's like ready mix concrete to me and uh same drill you you eat what's on the on the plate or you you don't leave the table until you do and that's right i literally sat there for hours determined that i'm not eating this stuff and so very very similar there and and i i guess that part of part of the exercise i'd like to explore a little bit because they're they're what what i'd say linking the fairness through to the single-minded determination that you have to compete in the sports arena

is there's an element of almost perfectionism that comes down to sometimes a black-and-white view of life. You can see right and you can see wrong, and when you see wrong, it's like, well, we need to sort this out. Was there an element of perfectionism that either was there intrinsically or emerged and that was perhaps reinforced over the journey, both in terms of the late sport and your career in law that has influenced the way you look at the world?

I think so, yeah. I think, you know, perfectionism, it's an interesting place to be as someone who sort of strives for that because there are certainly, you know, pros and cons to perfectionism and I don't really know if you can sort of enjoy it on one sense without sort of going through the cons on the other side. And I think, you know, when I look at it, again, I think it was always there.

And I think as I then moved through my education and then moved through sport, it was just this sense of needing sort of wanting to achieve more and needing things to be just right. And I'll never forget I was playing netball for New South Wales at national championships as a 17 – no, as a 19-year-old, I think. And we'd just played a game and I played the whole game and we'd won and I came off the court and I was in tears. And it was quite confronting, I think, for the people who sat on the bench

who didn't actually get to play the game, who sort of said, why are you so upset? And we just won. And I said, just because it didn't feel quite right, you know, I got some things wrong. And even though the result was there, it was that feeling of not quite being satisfied with that performance. And I think that drives me, that feeling of sort of constantly chasing that little bit more satisfaction. And I do understand that, you know, with that, you know, comes stress. And, you know, that there are, as I said, cons to that.

But it was that, yeah, that drive to always be that little bit better. And that certainly came out in sport. It certainly came out in my education, you know. And now even, you know, in my work, certainly it's always sort of striving to make sure that I am the best that I can absolutely be. and what are the areas that I might not be 100% in and how can I improve those and certainly not at the detriment of running with things that I'm good at but certainly trying to make sure that I can get across as much as I can

and achieve in all the areas that I'm focused on. So right from the get-go where you're a person that would whip yourself for the – you get 99% right and that 1% wasn't quite right, you'd be more focused on whipping yourself over the 1% than congratulating yourself on the 99%. Is that you? Absolutely. That is me to a T.

Yep. Yeah, that's – I'm laughing again because that's the challenge I've had all my life, actually. And I often try to question myself, where did that come from? I can't really put a finger on it because I didn't see it in mum and dad. But I've just had this just internal drive that I just want really whatever i turn my hand to it's either 150 or i or i don't do it i won't do it won't do half a job i'll go full bore and beyond beyond bore but if i can't do that then i won't do

anything is are you similar in that regard yeah yeah i think it's it's all or nothing isn't it it's once you once you're in you're in um and i think and sometimes and i think that i'm slowly learning this. And I think through my husband, who's a wonderful support person, but also sort of chides me sometimes and says, you know, why are you doing that? And I said, well, I've committed to it now. So, you know, so I'm in. And when I'm in, I'm all in. And, you know, I've had that experience. And it hasn't always been positive. I think sometimes when we get involved with, I've been, you know, on boards and some of those boards have been wonderful, but some of them haven't been and i think um you you sort of get to a point where someone says to you well you know

you can just step down and and i said well no i committed to to two or three years and and i will see that through because that's what i've committed to and i want to try and make a difference and um even if it's at the detriment sometimes of of other areas of my life and and boards are a great case because they're often very politically motivated and there's people on there for the glory not for the work and that's right and i've sort of consciously made a decision in recent years to not get involved in boards because that whole committee thinking just just doesn't work there's a lot of bollocks talked and and no real action or or or outcomes and your sense of fairness and your sense of commitment certainly wouldn't be matched by a lot there in fact quite a few would

be threatened by that i would i'd imagine so well that's been an interesting challenge for you has It has, it has. And I think to the boards that I've sat on, mostly related to sport and some community organisations, I think you, also being someone who comes to it though, when I relocated to Canberra is when I got involved with boards, but I didn't grow up in Canberra. So I got involved with these boards, but I didn't know the local landscape and the local politics around these boards. And that's a really interesting place to be as someone who wants to make a difference.

But because I didn't understand the landscape and understand the players involved, I missed the nuance in lots of those conversations. And I would sort of bring more of a business mind and a legal mind to those particular board meetings and AGMs. But you then realise that perhaps people aren't in it for the same reasons. And that's hard to come to terms with as well. Totally, totally. Love it. Well, I'm going to circle back a little bit

because I'd like to go on the dual netball come law journey if we can because, again, well, tell us a story around your entering into netball and, again, quite an escalated and fairly quick trajectory as a great netballer and then in alignment with that how the law exercise came about. Can you talk us through where you're thinking and how that panned out? Yeah. I mean, as a kid I was, you know, when you grow up in a country town,

sort of netball for the – netball hockey for the girls and rugby league for the boys. And that's how I discovered netball fairly early on. And I was a kid who did lots of sports. I did athletics and swimming and netball and running, but always had a really keen interest in netball and a love for it too. So, that was something that when I got a little bit older, when I started high school, you know, my parents said, you can't keep doing everything, so you need to choose. And I really did have a choice between netball or basketball. I've sort of played reps in both of those and decided to go down the netball path. and yeah I think you know as I became a teenager I'm a fairly tall person now I'm sort of six foot

one but back then I didn't grow until I was much older so I was a I was a sort of average height kid who played in the centre court of netball and I was quick and I think that that certainly helped and made my way to the Illawarra Academy of Sport when I was 14 and spent a couple of years there and then um made new south wales catholic school girl teams i was at the catholic school for high school so yeah made those teams um but then interestingly um i i trialed for the new south wales under 17s team two years in a row and wasn't selected um and i thought well that's it really that's me done um i didn't make it either year um i was you know i was getting towards the end of my schooling. I had a really keen focus on my HSC at the time. And I sort of said, well,

it's not going to happen. Anyway, my Illawarra Academy coach, who happened to also be involved at high levels in New South Wales, said to me, you know, I think you should really, you really need to trial again for the under-19s team. And I said, why? I've been putting myself through this misery for two years. And at the time, I was with the New South Wales Institute of sport um as a netball scholarship holder but they they had quite a few people um more than would make a team of 12 on those scholarships so um I I said to her okay I'll give it one more year um and I I put my nomination form in for um the under 19s New South Wales team and I made it for um for that year and that's then how the netball journey really took off um with that team and

And the Institute of Sport, I was with them for three years. The New South Wales Institute of Sport was on scholarship there for three years and then moved down to the Australian Institute of Sport on the scholarship when I was in my second year of university and transitioned down to Canberra. And I think back then, very different to today, the AIS was the pinnacle of sport. This is around 2000, 2001, and it was the absolute pinnacle.

Everybody lived there. Everybody went there. So as one of 14 people in the country who was lucky enough to get a scholarship down there, it was a sensational sort of launching platform for me. And the same year, I was named in the Sydney University Sandpipers netball team, which in today's sort of competition is the Suncourt Super Netball. So back then it was the ANZ Championship and there were two Sydney teams, the Sydney Swifts and Sydney Sandpipers, and I played for the Sandpipers that year too and made the Australian Under-21 team as well. So it was sort of a big couple of years there as I sort of journeyed

from high school into university and sort of the higher levels of netball. But also going back to when I was a teenager, still studying at school and doing a lot of travelling, you know, my dad in particular sacrificed so much to give me an opportunity to excel and living in Kiama and training in Auburn in Sydney, sort of a two-hour drive each way. And, you know, before I was old enough to drive, he would be driving me to and from three, four times a week. And then once I got my license, it wasn't too bad. But certainly, you know, sort of the sacrifice there. But also what that led to was some very late nights and not a lot of sleep. And sort of as a teenager, that's not the best position you want to be in. But I think just the sheer determination that I had around the sport but then also the study was a really keen focus for me.

I always had an interest in law and knew that to get into law, you know, I needed to, you know, hit the high 90s in my HSC and it was something I was absolutely focused on. And I'll never forget, actually, I was studying for my HSC and my brother, who's two years older than me, he was doing accounting at university. and we used to have competitions of who could study more, which is a little bit sad, isn't it? But it's like I studied for six hours. How long did you do? But I think it's – Tell me, jumping in there because this is –

it would be very revealing, I think, because I'd love you to talk through what did your routine look like? When you were – because just to get to that level in netball And also to get into law, I shared with you off air that when I was at uni, the only two people that were burning the midnight as much as myself at doing architecture was the – I was in a boarding house at uni and the guy doing law was doing just as many hours as I was. I survived the two last years of uni on four hours sleep a night.

And that was my only way to get through. And on top of that, you're playing elite level sport, which would demand, I would have thought, hours a day at times, if not more. Can you talk us through the routine and how you're able to juggle the demands of sport and the enormous reading load and case study load and doing law at the same time? How did you make that work? Yeah, it's a funny question, Bushy, because I think if I look back now, I ask the same question.

One, being a lot younger is obviously a benefit. I certainly couldn't do it today. But I think I was just so unbelievably structured, very organised. Back when I was at uni, everything was face-to-face, so there wasn't a lot that was done online. So it was a very full workload. I did six subjects a semester because I did a combined commerce

and law degree. So I did three law, three commerce, and it was a big, big workload. But I tried to structure it as well as I could and be as organised as I could. And I think in my uni days, I could obviously drive then, so I would structure it. So I'd leave my house in the morning and spend most of the day at uni and in the library, and then I would sort of – and that was in Wollongong.

and then Wollongong to Sydney was a little bit shorter distance than, say, Kiama to Sydney. So it was a good sort of stop-off point in the middle of the day and then I would sort of head off to training and obviously then come all the way back to Kiama in the evening. But I think that just being organised and being really efficient, I mean, they say, you know, give a busy person something to do and they'll get it done and I think that that certainly resonated

with me and just knew that if I wanted to get a double degree done as large as that one in five years that I didn't have a choice. So, it was a matter of being very structured, very focused and very strategic in how I put it all together. But then, as we said, you know, the sleep side of things wasn't always great and that suffered a little bit and I think you can probably bounce back a little bit better when you're a little bit younger. So, I didn't suffer too much from that, but yeah, I think it was really just that focus, but it was also a huge amount of sacrifice from my end. I mean, when you're 18, 19, you're in that point where you've got friends who might be doing the same degree or possibly one that wasn't as involved, and then certainly

most of my friends uh didn't do um didn't play the sport that i played so you would i would see them out and you know having good time and and having free time um but that wasn't the case for me and um you know it was it was something that i looked at and and thought well i need to weigh all this up but but the the drive to succeed um from the education and the sporting world really overtook anything like that and and I think too I had to work as well I I was you know working for those who might know that a place called Jamboree Recreation Park um which is not not too far from Klamath um it was a small sort of um fun park and and I worked on weekends um around my training too so I think just trying to get just trying to get everything in um it was tricky but

yeah it's structure it's sacrifice uh motivation I think they're they're the biggest things yeah and the structure is certainly uh a key in that and then then working out the structure and then then sticking to it uh because it doesn't sound like there's a spare second in uh that lifestyle you've just just described from the moment you wake up until the uh the time you hit the pillow which there's not there's not much downtime in that uh that wouldn't have allowed much social free time, so while your peers and colleagues are out partying and having fun, there would have been no room for that in anything you were doing, either study-wise or sport-wise, so did you feel like you were missing out at the time, or was it like, well,

these guys are wasting their time, I'm on a mission here, I don't care what they're doing, I know where I'm heading, look out? What was your thinking and feeling at the time? Yeah, I think there was a little bit of, you know, the missing out sort of things. I mean, I'm a very social person, so, you know, I loved my friends and was keen to spend some time with them. But it was always beaten, I guess, by the feeling of, well,

if I weigh all this up, you know, I think I'm still going to go down the path of the sport and, you know, making sure that I can do the study as well. So a little bit of missing out, but I think more of, you know, just don't let anything else get in my way. This is where I want to go, and I've got a laser focus on trying to get there. Yep, yep. And tell me, if you can think back this far, what was the end game in your head, the vision that you had in terms of sport and your life in the law? What was the vision of the life and the goals and achievements that you had in your mind that this is what I'm going to do?

Can you remember that back and can you sort of put some shape around that for us? Yeah, I think as a young person and being a very keen netballer, I used to watch the netball on television. I used to watch the Australian team, you know, win one point world championships in the middle of the night. And that was always what I wanted to do. I wanted to be an Australian netballer. At the time, you know, I knew that netballers – it's very different to today and it's wonderful that netballers get paid today and they can totally focus on it.

But back then, netballers didn't get paid. So, it was knowing that I wanted to get there but also knowing that I needed to have a career because being paid as a netballer was not an option. So, and I think a lot of the people I played with were in exactly the same boat. So, I think almost every netballer I played with throughout my career was at university studying or doing an apprenticeship or at TAFE. Everybody knew that you needed something outside that and to be able to juggle that was sometimes tricky.

If you had to travel interstate to play the big games, then, you know, you would have to take time off work. But I think if I look back and what I looked forward to when I was younger was absolutely, you know, the goal was be an Australian netballer, be a successful lawyer and try and make sure that those two work together. Yeah, yeah. And your goals in the law, I mean, you say being an successful lawyer, what did that mean to you? What did that look like? yeah i think um for me it was about um making sure i got into a really good firm um onto a graduate program and then i could work my way through um back then you know sort of article clerks um were around and some clerkships were around and that was a way to to get a foot in

the door um i had a real love for um intellectual property law um which is a bit probably unusual for some people. It's quite a niche area. But, you know, I had a real love for some of the subjects that I did, labour law too. I was sort of, I guess that's the fairness aspect coming out in me too around the labour law. But I always thought that I would be the person

who would fight for the common good. That was my, that was why I did law. I wasn't someone who was too distracted by sort of the television shows and standing up in a courtroom and arguing and that sort of thing. For me, it was all around doing good and seeing justice prevail. And I think that's what I really wanted to get out of it. Yeah, yeah, awesome. It's a big baton to carry in the sense that particularly in the current world where we see the lack of fairness trickle down right from the very top, particularly at the political level, it must have eaten at you at times and frustrated you.

deal with someone who has those perfectionist tendencies, who likes to be liked and is very social? There's a lot of conflict involved in the law. How did you come to grips with that conflict? Because I would imagine that would have been quite challenging. Yeah, it was bushy. And I think when I reflect on it, as I said, I really wanted to get into intellectual property law, but I didn't ultimately have an option for that. I think when you're a graduate in sydney um in the early 2000s your options were pretty limited um and i got into a firm um it was good firm mid-tier firm in sydney um but i got into commercial litigation um that was where i landed and coming back to the sort of the um the fairness side of things i was in um

working in secured and unsecured litigation and I I was the person who um drafted letters of demand and issued statements of claim and issued bankruptcy notices and you know would go to court and and um you know make sure that people were bankrupted on behalf of my big clients my big commercial clients and that that to me was very very hard um it was a difficult position to be in And after three years of doing that, I pulled the pin and I said, I can't do this anymore and I just can't be the partners that I work for. I can't see myself ever being in their shoes. And I left the profession behind.

Wow. Yeah. It was an unbelievably big decision. But something that was quite a quick decision in the end. I spoke to my husband about it and said, I just, I can't, I can't conscionably continue doing what I'm doing. And although someone has to do that and when people are in sort of financial situations and they do what they have to do,

I understand the process, but I didn't want to be the person pulling the trigger. I can't even imagine the execution of basically and you would have seen firsthand the rightly or wrongly whether that person got themselves into that position and the choices they've made. There's still a horrific outcome to that and you're sitting there in that very emotional situation. would have been with someone with your approach to life would have been soul-destroying, I would have thought at times. Yeah, absolutely was. Yeah, interesting.

Well, let's look back to because you achieved fantastic things in the netball arena and I'll talk in the post-recorded intro to give more details of that. But clearly there was a transition at some point there from netball then into rowing. Talk us around what happened then and what ended the netball exercise for you and then how did rowing emerge? Yeah, well, I was at the AIS and I suffered a significant injury

during a game. I blew out one of my ankles and tore all three limits and tore them off the bone in my ankle and had a couple of reconstructions and was told, look, we're not too sure how it's going to recover. You may or may not play netball again, but certainly have a year off and see how you go. So I left Canberra and moved to Sydney with my partner at the time who happened to be a rower that I met in Canberra.

So he had retired and he and I relocated to Sydney and he was from Melbourne, so he hadn't lived in Sydney before. and we were there for a few months and living in one of the southern suburbs in Sydney and I was studying I was working but I hadn't played netball for probably close to six or seven months and was a little bit getting you know itchy feet I guess because I you know wasn't probably as busy as I normally am but I didn't have just it was missing I had a big part of my life that was that was taken from me um and he came home one day walked in the door and said to me um and introduced me to a rowing coach who happened to live next door so the way that that

worked was um you know my part of the time he didn't he'd never lived in sydney um didn't know of this coach but this coach happened to be an australian coach when he was on the australian team um and it just happened to live in the apartment block next door and he came in and I met him and he said hi and I said hi and that was it um serendipity about about two weeks later I thought to myself hang on a minute um you know the rowing shed's only just down the road surely I could learn how to row and that you know that may be um you know could be something that I could take up um to you know to replace rowing I'm sorry netball at the time there was no no inclination from me at the time that it would lead to where it led um but I thought why don't I just give it a

go um you're one of these people who uh again i'm seeing some similarities who sort of casually falls into something and then as soon as you you start to focus on it all of a sudden it's it it it goes from a casual interest to know i'm going to be the best i'm yeah is that is that the the journey because i correct me if i'm wrong here but you went from a standing start with just a general interest in rowing in 2004 to being on the Australian rowing team in 2007 from a standing start, three years and you're in the Aussie team. Yeah, that's right. That's incredible.

That's how it went, yes. I mean, I think as being someone who was, I was in my 20s by the time I started rowing and what's a really interesting little story, I'll just tell that while I tell this, sort of explain the journey but i am in 2004 i started and then um by the summer of probably early 2004 and then by the summer of 2004 which is when rowing all the rowing camps happened um i got invited to a rowing camp down in jindabyne and i went and it was with um you know a lot of people who were olympians but funnily enough i knew a lot of these rowers because i was a netballer when they lived at AIS so so two or three years later um I came across them again and obviously we knew

one another and my partner had been a rower so I'd spent a bit of time with the rowers um and they said what are you doing here and I said good question I'm actually not quite sure um because I I think it was just it was don't you play netball I said well I did and I I row now but But good question. So I think, yes, from a standing start, you know, I jumped in a boat, which was a big thong of a thing. It looked like a thong, just a huge thong. And the coach at the time, who I said had been an Australian coach,

so I guess he had an eye for athletes. But it took me a while to even get to a point where I would sit in a boat on my own because I was petrified of falling in. um so you're still recovering from the ankle exercise too i'm imagining because i mean that was pretty much a career-ending exercise from the nipple front and the one thing i do know about rowing is that it works every absolutely every joint and every muscle and that takes everything your body to make that happen so that would have been interesting in itself i would have thought It was, yeah.

And I think with rowing, just the movement of your feet in a rowing boat, you've got to be able to be quite flexible. So I had to, you know, work through all that because you crouch right up when you take a rowing stroke. So it was something that I was working through. But, yeah, I think, you know, it took me a while to get in a boat. He was really understanding. But I'll never forget the day that I got in a single for the very first time

and the water was about knee deep. And then I sat in it. It was very, very unstable. and I had my oars and he said, take a stroke. And I said, no way. And he said, no, no, you'll be fine. You won't fall and take a stroke. I said, no way.

And I floated underneath a pier and he said, he came around, he said, just get out. So I jumped out. Literally it was knee deep and I walked the boat back to the shore. But that was my sort of introduction to rowing. But then obviously got the confidence to, you know, jump in a boat. And then he obviously saw that I had a bit of a flair for it, I think, and more because of, I think, my physical shape more than anything else.

I was tall. I was long. And I'd spent years as an elite athlete in a different sport. So I think he thought, well, maybe we could do something here. And that's sort of how it all started. Then unfortunately he left the sport. He decided that he had enough and so said to me, you need to move clubs. So I ended up in from – I sort of moved – I moved my whole life from the southern suburbs up to the northern suburbs of Sydney up to Mossman and joined Mossman Rowing Club where I met my coach.

His name was Nick, and he was a four-time Olympic coach at that point and happened to be the head coach of the Mossman Rowing Club. And that was in, I think, 2006 that I moved to Mossman, and then I made my first team in 2007. Just incredible. I mean, meteoric, really, in relation to – because you would have been up against rowers that have been doing it since their high school days and really working hard at it. I'd love you to share, just so people understand just how challenging rowing is, because having done a little bit of research on this, it's one of the most demanding Olympic sports, If you look at it across the board, there are very few sports

that exceed the combination of physicality, the cardio requirements there and then the mental challenge that goes along with that to train so hard for such a very short sprint of a race. Can you share with us a little bit of the challenges around that sport and just how hard it is both just to do it, let alone succeed in it. Absolutely. Yeah, I think it was an interesting transition for me

being a netballer. A netball, obviously, you need a team. You can't do it on your own. So transitioning from being a netballer in a very big team environment to being a rower, and rowing is really interesting because you've got teams of rowers because those who've watched rowing understand that you can be in a single or a double or a quarter or an eight

and you can have up to eight people in a crew. But to get to that point, you need to be fast on your own. And so it's a 2K race, but to be able to be fast over a 2K period of time, which is around about eight minutes for someone who's on their own, and then the time decreases the more people you have in the boat. So we're looking at probably a maximum of eight minutes. And when you think about eight minutes, it's not very long. But eight minutes is – it's two kilometres.

it's at your anaerobic threshold for eight minutes and that's a very long time to have a heart rate of over 200 consistently for eight minutes. And I'll never forget, you know, training, I'd hit 210, 215 for training sessions, heart rate, and, you know, we took all, we collected all that sort of data. But to get to the point where you could row 2Ks in a very quick time to be competitive,

You're doing six or seven 20-kilometre sessions a week on the water. You're doing 15-kilometre sessions on the rowing machine. You're doing weights three or four times a week. Saturdays would always be two rows, a big row and then a shorter row, so maybe a 20k row, then off for breakfast, a 10k row, off for lunch, and then a 50-kilometre cycle. So we'd go out to Westhead or Akuna Bay in Sydney, out to Palm Beach and, you know, our coach would follow us

and we'd be on our bikes and all of that to race for eight minutes. So there had to be a lot of enjoyment of the process, not just the race, but the process that you got some satisfaction out of, the having to push yourself that hard. Do you get satisfaction out of just going, right, I'm going to push myself as hard as I possibly can and that's what gives you your jollies? What is it that's driving you at that point?

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It's that, it's what is the threshold? What is the threshold and how far can I push to get there and then how far further can I push to get through it? And I think for those who might have ever rode, a 2K race is painful. It's, you get to a point in that race where you think,

oh god i really like to stop um every every single race every single race regardless of how how high your level is every single race you get to the point where this is really hurting me um and i but but to get to that point um you have to go through the process of doing training sessions that that really push you to the absolute limit but i've always been someone who's always wanted to push my body to its absolute limit, whether it's fatigue, whether it's heart rate, you know, whatever it might be, is that I want to, I want to make sure that I'm the best that I can be. And I know when I stop, I know that I could not have done anything else. That's the feeling that I have always searched for in, in the process of the training. And I love the training. I loved

just as much as racing I loved you know getting down to the shed at five o'clock in the morning it's pitch black you know getting my boat ready um getting on the water you know putting lights on the whole um the um the routine and the ritual of of doing that um for me was fabulous and but and the people I think the people involved um the squad that I was in in Canberra sorry in Sydney for years um just some of the most wonderful people um that became my second family um my coach certainly you know became a second father to me and um you know I enjoyed yeah the training just as much and I would always want to see what what could be next you know if I if I was doing a time trial a 5k time trial how fast did I go how fast can I go next week you know what was the

tide doing what's the wind doing um sort of knowing all the the factors um to to think about and to weigh in but but ultimately it was that feeling of sort of sheer exhaustion i think that i was sort of always searching for and knowing that i i really pushed to the very very end it's it's giving all is what i'm what i'm hearing there tell me about uh the times during the you know that that short uh eight minutes of a 2k race there's probably a regular point where you you hit that mental threshold where the most mere mortals would say that i'm done like i can't do anymore what what is it in your thinking that carries you past that point of of no return where it's like you know every part of your body would be burning every every breath uh would be it would

be like fire i would imagine uh how how do you what's your thinking what's your process that carries you beyond that point yeah i think i think sort of when it comes down to it is someone has to win and if i'm hurting as badly as i am surely everybody's going to hurt just as much and if i continue and go that little bit faster and push that little bit further they're going to hurt even more that might seem a little bit sadistic um but um but i always had that feeling and i've got a nine-year-old daughter now who loves running um and i often talk to her about that um she's a quite competitive runner and and and i say particularly up the hills i say if you go really fast up that hill and you push and push and push trust me everyone else is hurting

too but but if you're if you go a little bit quicker you know you'll be you'll make sure that they hurt more. And so, that was that concept for me was, yep, it hurts, but I'm going to get there and if I get there quicker, then that's going to be obviously a great result for me. But it was absolutely pushing through those physical barriers, those lactic acid barriers where, yeah, all you want to do is stop and throw your feet in the water. And it was that, yeah, that real sense of i need to do it because i need to achieve it but if i can do it and achieve it and win then um that's going to be even better for me yeah love it love it so i mean obviously yeah that approach produced great rewards because you got yourself in the australian rowing team in

pretty short order uh by 2007 and i understand you're actually selected following an appeal Talk to us around – it would have been pretty interesting. What was happening there? It was interesting. I think as an older person who joined the sport, as you said, you know, competing against people who'd done it for 10 years from, you know, junior athletes in high school and then going to junior world championships, that sort of thing, I think there was a little bit of you don't belong here

that happened. Yeah. And despite the fact that I was performing and getting good results, there was still a little bit of, oh, you know, you don't have the history behind you. This is all speculation, of course, from my perspective. But I think there was that little bit of I was an outsider. And I certainly got along really well with everybody. And I said I knew some of them, but I think more from the people looking at the crews and selecting who might make a boat go fast here but not there and what sort of combinations to look at. Ultimately, I went through the Australian selection in 2007 and I was not selected.

um and i the results that i um had had throughout the season but also when you go to a selection trials normally it's 10 days you normally race once or twice a day and what they do is they call seat racing where they they'll put me in a certain seat then they'll take me out and put somebody else in and see if the boat goes faster and they do this and they rotate people through different seats because even if you think of four people in a boat it can be very different between who sits at the front who sits at the back and obviously who sits in the middle so it's very very technical um and I had um produced results across that entire um selection regatta that should have seen me in the team but it didn't and so um at the time um one a good friend of

mine was a QC who was a member of Ross and Ryan club and I contacted him and I said we need to appeal he said yep no problem so um we put an appeal in and um it didn't get to the point where it went to a to a tribunal or to arbitration um the the decision was made um sort of behind closed doors that um they would put me into the team so it was a bit of politics creeping in here in terms of in terms of that the relationship side getting the right of the performance exercise and then you calling that out and saying, hold on, this isn't about who you like, this is about who's best. Was that sense of fairness bubbling to the surface again saying, hold on, I am the best

person to be on here, it's not about who you know and how long you've known them, was that your thinking at the time? It was, it was, I mean, I put in lots of hard work, but again, the fairness side of things, So, I just, I didn't, I couldn't see how, it wasn't as subjective. From my perspective, it was nowhere near as subjective as what I think they were making it out. I think it was, it always is a bit tricky with boat seat racing because you've got conditions that might affect it. You've got wind that might come up that wasn't there half an hour ago. So, there are certain things and it can be tricky and I certainly don't envy selectors and I sit on a selection panel in Canberra and it can get very tricky.

um but the when it is as black and white as it was um there was for me there was no gray um in that process and so when when it was announced and and i said well it was a wasn't even a second thought it was no no this is wrong um and i need to i need to write this wrong yep yep you won the appeal clearly to get into the team, and the move to Adelaide, what drove the move to Adelaide? Was that because of the alienation that resulted from that exercise? No, not at all, no. So the team, what was interesting was they selected, I was a sculler,

which means you have two oars, every person has two oars, and they selected a double and a quad, so a two- and a four-person boat. and when they decided to put me in the team instead of switching somebody out for one of those boats they selected me to row the single for Australia which they hadn't selected because historically Australia hadn't done all that well in single racing we sort of we did better in bigger boats so two or four or eight people so what they did was they put me in the single and said well you can go and race the single at world champs which they hadn't done in a long time and you can essentially be sort of the reserve for the other boats because what they do in rowing is

they prioritize boats so they say okay if um we think that the quad is going to have the best chance to get a medal based on all the other crews in the world so we are going to prioritize the quad and we're going to put our best four rowers who row together which might not be the top four in the country could be the person who's second fifth tenth and seventh but they row the best together we're going to prioritize that boat and put them in so they had a double and a quad and then I was the single so I got to race the single at world champs but um I would also be there if if one of those um squad members couldn't um couldn't race but the move to Adelaide was because the coach appointed to the female um scholars heavyweight women scholars crew was lived in

Adelaide so they moved the whole squad to Adelaide um and we trained down there for about three or four months um which is interesting though because I was still I was doing my postgraduate um degree in law at the time, so I had to fly back to Wollongong a couple of times when I was in Adelaide to sit exams because they wouldn't let me sit them in Adelaide, which was a little bit frustrating. But, yes, the move to Adelaide was because of the coach, and that often happened. You'd have crews that would all relocate to Perth or to Tasmania

or to Adelaide because that's where the coach was based. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. that did it feel like the racing this single skull based on you know what i'm hearing there if they hadn't raced the single skull for quite some time it's almost like a yeah we'll give you a position but we'll give you a position that's not the serious position because we've already decided who the four are did you feel that did you feel yeah yeah i did but i also thought well um i mean and it gives me a good opportunity and a launching pad for next year beijing's next year And I thought, I'll take that.

You know, I think I wasn't going to be too fussy in trying to then fight for a position within one of the crews. I was very comfortable in the single. I really liked rowing the single. And I think also when you're in a single, you only rely on yourself. And this is probably where this sort of innate sense of, I guess, of pushing myself every step of the way was that it was only ever me. And so if I didn't do something well, it was always me,

and I could focus on that and fix that. And, you know, and I think too there was actually one day or a couple of days we were training up at Murray Bridge, which you might know, Bushy. I do. I know it well. On the Murray there. On the Murray, yeah, we went up there.

And I was a rower who always suffered from really bad hands. I always got like blood infections in my hands and always sort of that friction on the rowing oars. If you Google, you know, rowing hands and you'll find what I'm talking about. My imagery is not real pleasant right now, so I may not do that actually. No, but there was a particular situation one day at Murray Bridge where my hands were so bad that I couldn't hold on to my oars. Wow.

And I couldn't use another fork. I couldn't feed myself. So I thought, okay, well, it's only me, so I could definitely not train. But if I did train, it's going to be painful, and I'm going to want to take my hands off the oars. So what should I do? So I taped my wrists to my oars. Yeah.

so I said I said to one of my one of my team members one of my best mates I said can you just tape just get some strapping tape and just tape my wrist to the oars and she said why don't I do that I said well if you don't I'm going to let go and because it's going to and I don't want to do that so if you tape my oars to my hands then I'll be forced to train and um she's she's like you're insane but um but did it anyway so um you know i think i think it's it's again and being in the single i could sort of do that i didn't have to impact anybody else um so in the end um i had you know a really good time um racing the single that year well you got in the world champs and uh you end up being placed 13th in the world which is just absolutely incredible but uh i understand

there was a major shoulder injury that happened around that time. Talk us through what happened and I'd love you to share your thinking because it would have been a devastating blow at that time. Talk us through the circumstances around that. It was. It was absolutely devastating. So when I was in Adelaide, my left shoulder was giving me a little bit of grief and I finally went and saw a sports doctor about it and he told me

that I had a stress fracture across the back of my shoulder blade And he said, do you play rugby? He said, do you play AFL? And I said, no. And I said, why do you ask? And he said, well, that's an injury AFL players get because they, with all the jumping in AFL, they often, you know, might get a foot in the back and they crack their shoulder blade.

I said, no, I'm a rower. And so sort of long story short, that was just at the time where we were transitioning back to Sydney because we were flying out. We were going across to Henley, the Henley Royal Regatta in London. And then off to, from Henley over to Switzerland to train in the Swiss Alps to do altitude training. And then we were heading down to Italy, which is where the base camp for Rowing Australia is, in Verrazia, northern Italy, then before going to Munich for World Champs. So, that was the process. So, we made our way home from Adelaide back to Sydney and the team left without me.

I wasn't medically cleared to go. So, you know, in the end, I think looking back on the single was probably a good thing because it would have affected the team had I been in a crew boat. But I was told to down all tools in terms of rowing and that stress fracture requires six weeks of rest. So I went back to Mossom Rowing Club and got on a very old spin bike and put a television in front of the spin bike and spent six hours a day for six weeks on a spin bike. I couldn't do anything else. And that was certainly – spending six hours a day on a spin bike is not a hell of a lot of fun. And I knew they were racing over in Henley and it was a really big blow. Um, but I, I did my rehab and, and did everything I had to do and they finally cleared me to,

to head over, but I missed Henley. Um, and I, so I've never raced at Henley, which is a shame and maybe something I'll do on my bucket list. Um, but, but I, um, I ended up meeting up with them, um, with the team in the Swiss Alps up in a place called, um, St. Moritz in the Alps and, um, started my training there and then sort of joined them and then went to Italy and Germany from there. You know, just for those that don't know, the altitude training is a very important part of preparation given that with the lower oxygen levels of that higher altitudes, it forces you from an aerobic perspective to have to work a lot harder so that when you get back down on the track, it's easier. It must be very challenging conditions, Zoe.

Yeah, it is. And a lot of – I mean, a lot of sports do altitude training, and it is challenging, but something that everyone sees a net benefit to. So, you just sort of have to get on with the job. And where we were training, funnily enough, it was a very famous lake for kite surfing. Okay. And we thought, well, hang on, if it's famous for kite surfing, then it's got to be windy and really windy. And really windy and rowing does not mix. so it was it was I had an interesting experience there one day where I was in the single and

the wind was terrible and I was getting waves crashing on onto the boat and I nearly sank I managed to get to just just close enough to shore I could jump out and stand up and then and then pull the boat in but freezing cold water in the Swiss Alps even in summertime but but yeah the training up there was intense and you could really feel it you know doing things like things like chin-ups or even weights in the gym that you might at sea level be completely fine with just so much more taxing on your body at altitude incredible incredible but you managed to get through that and you you got into the Australian Olympic rowing team in 2008 you actually then did shift across into the quad skulls and again there's a bit of an injury

exercise there talk us through what was oh yes yeah so um there were two olympic selection regattas the first one was in february and that all went really well and then the second one was in april and i was in the gym um doing a normal session about a week out from the final olympic selection regatta and i did a squat jump and um tore my rectus abdominis so one of the um the muscles in in your groin um connected to your abdominals and um and i i went straight upstairs i was at a n swiss and so i went straight upstairs to the physio and they laid me down and um they said can you sit up and i couldn't do a sit-up and they said oh you've torn your rectus abdominis and then they told me that um a very famous um australian athletics uh sprinter had done that

I think four or eight years before that and he was out for eight weeks and I said well I said well you've got seven days so um whatever you have to do just do it and um and so uh in those seven days I um I couldn't walk very well um and I was sort of having as much treatment as I could have cortisone injections um that type of thing but did get to the final selection regatta unable to row um they wouldn't clear me to um to compete so for the first two days um i sat on the side of the sydney olympic rowing regatta course um on a spin bike again um just cycling over watching everybody race and just being sort of mortified that um i wasn't out there um by the third day um they cleared me to race a single skull for half about 1250 meters they said yep you can get

in and they taped me with strapping tape I had strapping tape from my um covered my entire belly area so from my groin sort of all the way up um and just to try to hold everything together and um that was successful so by the fourth day um by the fourth day they said you can jump in a boat and then by the sixth day I think I'd raced twice and then by the sixth day it was all over and I thought oh dear this this is either very very bad um or you know I've I've performed well enough um and I had the boats that I went in went quite quick so that that was fine but I just hadn't had many races um but I had had the the Olympic regatta um qualification regatta two months before that as well that had gone very well so I think I that was sort of in my favor um and then did two

or three races and then they called it off and I remember sitting it was one there was the evening they announced the Olympic team and I was sitting upstairs and for those who might have seen the rowing course in Penrith um there's a finishing tower it's quite it's quite tall and I was sitting in the the tallest room in the finishing tower overlooking the course and it's about 7 30 at night and the whole squad was there and we were just waiting waiting to be to be told you're in or you're out um and I'll never forget that moment because it was one of the most stressful moments of my life um and you know when you when you hear your name announced um it's it's a big relief um and you sort of you feel like okay i've done it and and now it's sort of on to on to the next

phase of training and what do we know it's sort of this this switching focus of okay now we're there we've got to get this crew in we need to make sure that the crew um you know trains really well it gels really well and and away we go and that's how it happened it's really interesting that you use the word relief uh when you when it was announced it it's it's not there is i'm sure there's some joy in there as well but your your your word was relief and what that's telling me is that the enormous physical emotional mental stress and pressure of of getting to that point we are even in consideration to then say, yep, you're in. And it's like, oh, I'm in.

And then there's about one second of breath before, right, now I'm focusing on making it happen. Yeah, that's right. It just talks to the level of intense stress and pressure that you must be under and also the amount of stress and pressure you put yourself under because you're so focused on that end goal of getting into the Olympics and potentially winning a medal that there's a lot of self-pressure in that as well. Am I right in saying that?

Absolutely. Oh, it's huge. And I think for me, it's the number one. I think that intrinsic motivation and the absolute desire to succeed and be the best that I can be, it all comes from within and it is stressful. And I think when you live in that bubble, you go with the flow, you sort of, you understand it, you know it's happening. But then, yeah, when you do take a step back in those moments where you can take a breath and you realise the magnitude of it and how much you'd actually been, and probably more than you were ever aware of it, how much you'd been anticipating and, you know, waiting and hoping for that to happen. Yeah, it certainly was a relief.

but the process to get there is probably more enormous than you realise as an athlete and once you do have a chance to reflect, you realise the significance of it. Absolutely incredible. How does that translate into other areas of your life then because you put intense expectation and pressure on yourself to achieve, you know, to be 100%,

there's no room for 99%, it's got to be 100%. How does that then, you know, I look at you're in a senior management role now in a company in Canberra. How does that then ripple out in terms of your expectations of others? Is it that you're quite comfortable putting pressure on yourself, but you don't have the same expectation of those around you? How does that sort of sort itself out? Yeah, I think in business, it's a little bit different. I certainly do put, in terms of myself, I certainly do have those same expectations of myself. it's it's about you know it's pushing the boundaries it's it's achieving as much as I can

it's making sure that I'm I've got you know a laser focus on the goals and where I'm going and where the business is going and what I need to do to make sure it gets there and I think with others it's really about I think leadership's really about taking people on the journey with you and really inspiring them and showing them why it's important and and having these collective goals that really resonate with them and then they strive to also achieve the same thing. So, I think I certainly have expectations across the business, but I think they're not unrealistic expectations because those who are playing and performing those roles buy into the same culture and the same goals.

So I think there's a real – there's a big mutual benefit there from a business perspective. Yeah, okay. Because when you come in with that operating system of, you know, perfection is the minimum result, not the ultimate outcome, and you're exhibiting that approach to yourself, when there are others in the team that aren't pursuing it with the same vigour? Does that create stress and concern for you?

Yeah, it can. I think, yeah, it's certainly something that I'm very sort of focused on the fact that my expectations for myself, sometimes it might be unrealistic to put those on to others. And that sort of level of achievement is something that I think, as I said, they share. But in saying that, I think that it can be a little bit sort of frustrating when I might not be able to sort of motivate them

as much as I would like to be able to sort of to get a point across or to say, you know, share sort of this vision. But I think that's rare. I think that people, we're very selective with who sort of comes into the business because we are on a certain trajectory. So I think it's rare that I would have to sort of experience too much frustration around it because those who are on that train are on there for the right reasons. Yeah, so you've attracted the right people to support that vision and those that don't have probably been managed out anyway, have they? if I'm reading that correctly. Yeah, look, I think, you know, we've been really lucky.

Our business has grown exponentially over the last few years and we've probably only, if we reflect on it, have a handful of people that might have sort of left us to do other things that we would otherwise have, you know, wanted to stay. So I think if you can, in any business, I think you can certainly see if there isn't quite the right fit for for the business and for others and that's okay too i think that sometimes you try things

and it doesn't quite work and and we might realize that an individual individual might realize that and then you know we um sort of we mutually go um on separate journeys but i think that's um that's all part of running a business and um making sure that you do bring the right people in and you're developing the right culture um for the people within the business yeah yeah I love it. Now, I know that you're about to be named the firm's first CEO, and you're actually a finalist in the Executive of the Year 2021 Women in Law Awards. Again, massive outstanding achievements in what is pretty much still,

unfortunately, a male-dominated arena. how have you have you navigated that pathway in the context of all of that yeah look i think what's been really interesting for me from a career perspective is as i mentioned earlier i stepped away from the law and i stepped away from law for quite a long time once i left that firm in sydney i got into a completely different industry i i worked for a leisure management company that ran aquatic facilities and golf courses and swim schools and gyms and um that I was a general manager there for seven years when I lived in Sydney and then when I moved to Canberra, I had this inclination that, you know, I wanted to go back to the law but

not to practice. I think having had seven years of GM experience, I always loved the law and I still do but I thought maybe, just maybe I could do something on the management sort of leadership side of law and that's the path that led me to the company I'm with now. And I've been with the company for four years and sort of went in when it was really small. We didn't have an office. We worked out of one of the owners has a farm out past Stromlo in Canberra and we worked out there for a little while. And then we grew to the point where we finally took up office space in Canberra.

And over the last four years, I think I joined four years ago and we had 20, between 20 and 30 people, I think, and we now have 120. so the the growth has been exponential um and so i i joined the leadership team with the two directors and another colleague and there was the four of us who sort of led the business for for quite a long time and and now it's um obviously grown so we've had to build out that sort of governance structure um with the business and and for me um you know moving from um more like a gm role across you know everything in the business to a more focused role for the last three years as the chief operating officer for the business um really focused on on driving the internal engine of the business um and and yeah i've been um i really love what i do and and the people i work

with are fabulous and um i've um always expressed a desire to you know continue to learn and and to continue to um you know push my career forward and yeah i'm in the fortunate position now where proximity is at a point where it's big enough to appoint a CEO and that's what will be happening in the next couple of months and there'll actually be two of us appointed to a sort of a co-CEO role to make sure that we're you know across all elements of business as it continues to grow and there's a really really big growth trajectory for the business and new business plan this year and you know we're looking at how we push ourselves to the next level. Yeah and that that push word again uh i think that that would probably be your favorite word i reckon zoe

push push push uh tell me uh in the context of that again given the the level of dedication you give to everything you do uh that's that's potentially becomes life-consuming how do you how have you managed to balance uh you know getting married you've got uh two great kids how have you managed that that exercise and and given what you're about to go into that that pressure is only going to increase potentially uh how how have you and how will you continue to to measure that so that you keep everything in check yeah i think it's a really good question because i think like you're right i mean this um i work fairly long hours as it is and something like this could, you know, could possibly push that in a, you know, that could be, that trajectory

could keep going up. And so, it's really important to have a really keen focus on making sure that doesn't happen. And I know I'm very fortunate that the two men who own the business I work for, they're also in a similar position in life. They've got children and they know that work isn't everything. So, we've got a very keen focus on work-life balance in the business. But, you know we also know that things need to get done and i think for me um the first the biggest thing is the supportive environment that i have at home um i have a wonderful husband um as you said i've got two great kids um and and my husband has always always been very supportive um throughout my rowing and then although when i told him i was retiring from rowing he couldn't have been happier

that's probably one of the happiest days of his life um so he said i've been waiting for years for you to say that. But I think that supportive environment, I can't understate that. It's incredible. He is wonderful. He said, he, you know, fairly similar to what my dad, when I was much younger, said, I want to give you, you know, the path to make sure you achieve everything that you want to achieve. And my husband's a bit the same. He understands that, you know, I've got these career goals, but, you know, I've also got family goals and he's happy to sort of help and support me through that he's got he works full-time he's got a he's got a great job and he's got a senior role in his business too so it's us you know juggling that he has a little

bit more flexibility so he you know he plays that really great role but I think it's about it's about making sure I'm organized and then I'm focused and that I prioritize I think that's the really you know and that goes back to probably my days as an athlete but it's really I think when you are a busy mum and you're trying to do lots of different things. And as I said, you know, I try and I volunteer. I sort of, I sit on the Paralympic rowing classification committee and I do the Paralympic classification and trying to fit all those things in and feel like I'm giving back, but I'm also giving my family

enough time and giving my work enough focus. It's really tricky and it's a real juggling act, but I think the prioritisation and organisation and focus are probably my really sort of big things and I think too you know understanding that that there has to be balance and and always taking the time out to focus on health gives me a real sense of calm and clarity my husband often tells people I have a mental illness because I because of my because of my sort of no I wouldn't say it's an addiction to training but I certainly make sure that um i do that and that gives me um a bit a little bit of space it might be 45 minutes

a day or something like that an hour a day but it's also time to focus on health and um and being really functional um physically because i don't think any of us can get through um the busy lifestyles we have without making sure that we look after ourselves look after our bodies you You know, what we do, what we eat, how much exercise we do, that's really important because that sets us up and that's one thing I focus on as well. Yeah, and being very similar, not to the level that you do, of course, but the physical exercise, it just calms the jets for me. In fact, I'll become a very itchy, scratchy, grumpy bastard if I don't exercise. so I'm a better person for myself but I'm also a better person for others when I'm including that physical regimen in the routine.

Absolutely. Yeah, love that. So if you sort of look back at your career to date, are there any regrets and if you spoke to your school leaver self now, would you advise her to invest her time, energy and money any differently to what you've done? oh look i think regrets no no regrets i think um the path that's led me to where i am i wouldn't change it um you know the injuries haven't been so much fun sometimes you know ankles and you know shoulder reconstruction and that sort of thing um you know certainly wouldn't change it

um you know i could take those away but apart from that i wouldn't change it i think if i if i if i sort of talk to my former self i think that one of the things i would say would be to – that investment's a long game and to start early. And that's in everything. That's education, financial, but invest early and if you can, you know, know what you're pitching for. And I think – the other thing I think I would, you know, talk to my former self about is that if you're – whatever you're doing

And if you are choosing a career where you're working for someone else rather than yourself, which many, many of us do, that make sure whoever you're working with or whoever you partner with or whoever you spend time with, that they invest in you as much as you invest in them. Because there are so often, I think, relationships can be one-sided. and I think we all need to be acutely aware of that and really find the place where we can be happy but really making sure that the investment is two ways. Have you had some experience where it hasn't been two ways? Because you're a 150% person as well so whatever you're going to do, you're going to give to that level

and you give that dedication, you give that loyalty I'm picking up from what you're saying there that perhaps that hasn't been reciprocated in certain instances what's what's been the experience there yeah I think there's been instances that I've had professionally where the I guess loyalty when you bring sort of loyalty into it I'm a very loyal person I'm very dedicated but you know once I'm in I'm in so and I think too loyalty can be a little bit one-sided sometimes and can almost be a poison chalice where people can take advantage even if they're not consciously doing it and I think that that we sort of need to be mindful that and I've reflected on um situations in my life uh professionally where I've probably

not noticed it at the time and I've been others have sort of mentioned it to me um but I've sort of thought no no it's okay you know I'm okay um but when I you know you reflect on something like that you realize that um perhaps you need to have um the perspective of someone else or to be able to take a step back sometimes and really assess and evaluate your position and and that's something that I you know was able to do and sort of remove myself from a situation um that wasn't necessarily bad um certainly I found it quite enjoyable but um you could start to see that it was far more one-sided I was giving a lot more than I was getting back yeah and there's a point where people start taking advantage of it and they start expecting it

and then the gratitude's gone and then you start to feel used in that situation rather than, yes, yeah, it's a tough challenge for someone like you in that regard. I'm going to switch into what I affectionately refer to as the ambush round now, Zoe, which are the fast five or the bushfire lightning round, as I like to call it, that the listeners love to glean your words of wisdom on. So to kick that off, what's your favourite quote and why? Oh, you'll love this one, Bushy.

This quote is from Hunter S. Thompson. Now, he and I probably don't share a lot in common in terms of how he lived his life, but this is one of my favourites. So this one goes, Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming, wow, what a ride.

So I love it. I think that it sort of, it reflects, you know, how I approach life. Certainly not, you know, I'm not a risk-averse person. I'm happy to take risks and go down the untrodden path and I simply love that. I think it's a wonderful way to live your life. Totally.

I love that quote. It's one of my favourites actually. It's a cracker. And it's really about embracing life as a fantastic opportunity and making sure that we are squeezing absolutely everything out of it. And I'm sure that like me, you probably look at a lot of other people who are sometimes, in my opinion, wasting their life. It's probably too strong a word, but it frustrates me.

I've seen people through my journey have wonderful natural abilities that they either ignore them, take for granted, or don't do anything with it. And we're here such a short space of time that it astounds me sometimes that people aren't going, wow, let's really make the most of the journey while we're here. but what's your what's your thoughts around that yeah absolutely i think you you do you often see people who post through life a little bit um and and not really um sort of pushing the boundaries

and i don't mean physically just sort of you know pushing in a way that um sort of takes them outside their comfort zone i guess and um and i think more of us should do that because there is so there is so much out there and like you said it's such a short space of time that we're here and to really find out what it's all about and have those different experiences. And I think that's so important because, you know, you impart wisdom to others and if you've got children, you know, you can bring them along the ride or you can, you know,

make sure that you sort of transfer those stories and you teach those lessons. And I think that more of us should be doing that. Totally, 100%. All right, switching into the literary field for a minute then, what's the top book that you'd recommend we read and why, Zoe? Yeah, oh, Bushy, I don't read as much as I used to. As you would know, you know, I read a lot of legal text for a very long time.

Yes, you did. But look, I think for me, reading for me is an escape. And I love the novel by Terry Hayes, who's an Australian writer, called I Am Pilgrim. And it's a classic sort of thriller, I guess. I'm not sure if you've read that one, Bushy. I haven't. It's going straight on the list.

That's going to the Kindle as we speak. Awesome. It's a big book. I think it's about 600 pages. Nice. But yeah, I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes. I think it's a great read. I mean, it's a classic sort of thriller centered around, you know,

a man's journey to uncover a serial killer's identity. And then he becomes, you know, entangled in this whole terrorist conspiracy. And I just can escape into those books. I really enjoy them, and my husband hates them. So he's like, oh, it's so, you know, that's never going to happen. I said, that's okay because that is my time, you know. It's my time to enjoy something that I otherwise wouldn't.

Love it, love it. Now, this next one's a little bit left field, but there's still a lot of Australians who feel that they pay too much tax. So what's the top legal thing that you've done to minimise the tax that you pay, Zoe? Yeah, I think, well, very recently, Bushy, as you know, you know, we've purchased a property, an investment property, and we've structured the purchase of that property to ensure that a maximum refund for me,

given that I'm sort of in a high tax bracket threshold, you know, we were very conscious of that. And we looked at our options and thought, okay, well, that's the best way to go. So that's how we've structured the purchase of that property. Yeah, and for the listeners, that's using tenants in common provisions where we can slant the percentage of ownership to the higher income earner and therefore keep a lot more of your hard-earned money in your pocket, not the tax man. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, brilliantly done.

Now, back on the investment topic for a minute then, what's both the worst and the best piece of investment advice that you've ever received today? Certainly the worst advice was not to buy property back in 2012. Who told you that? Oh, I think, you know, I think it was a family member and I won't drop them in. But said, oh, no, not a good investment. You know, you should stay away from property in the sense of it being an investment rather than to live in. Yeah. So, yeah, that was probably one of the worst pieces of advice I've ever received.

The best? But I think if I, yeah, but the best I think is you need to make money when you sleep. Yeah. So find an investment opportunity that will actually allow that to happen. And I think that that's a really keen focus for me at the moment, for myself and my husband, is what can we acquire, what assets can we acquire that will do that for us, that we don't have to work extraordinarily hard to get them

to increase in value and to work for us. So certainly making money while you sleep is a very good thing and a very good position to be in. And probably the other one I wanted to mention was that understanding that debt um is actually an asset um and i know you probably know a lot more about this than i do bushy um but that it's a really positive thing and it really allows the use of leverage to build equity um and then you can move equity from one asset to another as property appreciates and and we go down that path so i think in terms of the two best pieces of advice

they're probably the two best ones that that i've ever heard yeah love it and they're spot on and And they're those that, unfortunately, a lot of hardworking Australians don't learn until too late in life. So, you're certainly on to that early, which is awesome. Okay, final question in the series then. What's a personal habit that you believe has contributed most to your success? I won't say investment success, but to success generally over your journey so far? Yeah. There's probably a few of them.

I think I'm a super pragmatic person. Um, I don't sort of get too, um, emotionally attached to anything investment related. So just looking at the investment side of things, um, and I, I can stay quite rational, um, with it. So I find that that's been really helpful when we've sort of been on this recent investment journey. Um, I think also, you know, being effective at my job, um, allows and provides this, um, disposable income that then I can invest back and, you know, build wealth, you know,

hopefully to get to that point where we're financially free. So, I think those two things around the actual investment. In terms of a personal habit around success, I think it's, I do really think that it's being organized. I think that successful people are generally organized and because they're organized they can fit a lot in um and and they feel like that they never get overwhelmed so i think that's really a personal habit that i've had i've maintained as long as i can remember um because i've always sort of you know bitten off more than i can chew and then i've you know you need to chew like hell sort of thing um but i i think um yeah i think you know being organized and structured is a really key part of my life

Yeah, and I think if you look back, you know, the proof's in the pie with your own life to date, Zoe, in that you have this innate ability clearly to focus on a massive goal, but then to do the work on a daily basis, incrementally making the changes, but constantly pushing yourself so that the success is almost inevitable because you treat it as a long game. You know that's going to take a lot of hard work. You're not scared by the hard work, but you break it down into daily bites. That means that what I'm doing today I know is going to get me to where that ultimate goal is. And there's very few people that have the discipline and commitment and determination to actually go the distance. So I fully commend you on that. Final question then, and it's a big one that gives you an opportunity really to put a bow around the conversation that we've had today. if i gave you a microphone that spoke to every single one of the 7.7 billion people alive in

the world today and i gave you 60 seconds to talk what sort of life-changing message would you give to them and why oh i think i think really it's around health um and take action today and do something for your future, do something that your future self will thank you for. So, and I really do think it's around health, it's around getting good advice, it's around doing your own research in whatever you're doing with your life, doing due diligence and taking risks. I think that that's a big part of living life to the absolute fullest. So, you know, be conscious of risk and make sure that you leverage opportunities when they come your way. Love it.

Love it. Beautifully said. Beautifully summed up. It's been an awesome conversation, Zoe. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your journey so far. You know, I've always had a lot of respect for you and it's only escalated in our conversation today. So I appreciate you taking some very precious time out of your extremely busy day to share that with us on Get Invested. Oh, thanks, Bushy.

And likewise, you know, I know how busy you are. So it's been wonderful to chat. It's been awesome. Stay in touch and we'll talk soon. Thanks, Zoe. What? Thanks, Bushy. Bye.

To get a summary of all this investment gold in the show notes, just email me on hello at khgroup.com.au. That's H-E-L-L-O at khgroup.com.au or check us out at www.bushymartin.com.au forward slash Get Invested. I look forward to joining you next week for another episode of the Get Invested podcast. So thanks for listening. And as always, dream as if you live forever

and live as if you die tomorrow.