Your Happy Hour - Extraordinary To Ordinary

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

In this episode, we chat to James Audcent, an emerging leader in Western Australia’s technology and entrepreneurship sectors and who at 21 had already co-founded the state’s first technology consulting social enterprise, delivering low cost digital transformation for charities. Now, after 5 years, having discovered the true cost of business ownership, he made the difficult decision to accept his first full-time employee position and shares with us his journey in understanding the root of overachievement, the importance of self-acceptance and the value of being present in his pursuit of an ordinary yet fulfilling (and creative) life. The Feels is all about having those honest conversations, the power of community for personal growth and taking those actionable steps towards being our authentic selves.Thanks for tuning in! Keep it raw and real out there xYHH is produced by swartkat.co - captured via riverside.fm & shared via rss.com.

It's the Friday feels and we're back with your first sip of the weekend. You're now tuned in to this week's episode of your happy hour. I'm your host Nicole Carmine and it's amazing to have you here. Joining me this week as we uncover the truths about being a human and a working professional. What are you up to this Friday? Well, whatever it is, this moment is just for you. And we're back with another episode on the Feels podcast called Your Happy Hour. And today we are still chatting about the theme of relieving, achieving, which is a big one as we're into the year.

And I feel like we all have so much to say about that. And we all have our own experience of that as we battle what that is achievement. And hopefully celebrate it as much as possible. So today I have a really beautiful and wonderful guest that I've also just got to meet and excited to get to know on this podcast. And a big shout out to one of our previous guests, Vincent, for putting us in touch. It seems like we all met each other quite randomly in the way that we do as expats roaming the world. And I want to welcome you, James, to the field space and your happy hour podcast. It's really wonderful to have you here.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Nicole, a big fan of the work I've listened to from you. And yeah, super excited to discuss such an interesting topic. Thanks, thanks for listening and tuning in. And yeah, absolutely. So it seems to me like you've had quite an interesting kind of entrepreneurial journey. And I know that recently you've made some decisions to, like you put it, kind of go from extraordinary to ordinary, which is really interesting. And I think maybe you can tell us a little bit more about.

where your journey has led you to where you are today. Yeah, absolutely. So I think probably the first thing to say is a bit of context about how I grew up and where I grew up. I was born in England and my parents came from different sides of the world. So my dad was always born and raised British, but my mum had grown up in New Zealand after being born in Australia. And they tried living in the UK, but my mum didn't really like the weather.

that much, as you can imagine, especially coming from the southern hemisphere in Australia and New Zealand, which is, you know, a bit better. And so they moved to Australia, just to start a family. So I was two when we got to Sydney initially. And today I'm joining from Perth, which is a really nice place to live. It's a place where you can walk into the supermarkets barefoot and shirtless, which I don't know if you can do that at a supermarket at Paris. Probably not exactly. And we're technically the most remote are some definitions, city in the world.

We have the best beaches in Australia, which a lot of Sydney-siders and Melbourne-siders would disagree with me on. But we're a really nice place to live, and it's got a great lifestyle, which is kind of why the topic of relieving, achieving, I find so interesting, because it's actually hard to find that many people. people in Perth who struggle with that. We have some of the best work-life boundaries that there are.

And actually, if you spend too much time in the office, people almost shame you into not working because they say, what are you doing, mate? People are going to get the wrong idea. And we're going to have to work harder. So I guess, yeah, in terms of my journey, I brought up by a mother who has a PhD in astrophysics and a dad who did French literature. at Oxford. So as you can imagine, like, quite an extraordinary set of parents to have. And therefore, probably my default has always been towards trying to achieve extraordinary things, whether or not that was always in my best interests. That was kind of just the default, because in order to be ordinary in my family, I had to be, or I felt that I had to be extraordinary. So, yeah, initially that

led me to start my first business venture at a very young age. I was selling these colorful high bounce balls to my classmates in like year three or something, raising money for charities. It wasn't much, but it was, you know, it was cool to create this little invention that could do some good. And then, you know, I pivoted towards high school, pivoted towards academics in high school. My parents, you know, were like, come on, like, let's get some decent grades. So you open up your possibilities. So I kind of fell out with entrepreneurship at that. point but really rediscovered it in university, particularly after finding how boring I found the technical computer science degree that I was doing. And so doing a few hackathons and things

like that, I really discovered again that love for the creativity and the ideas and solving people's problems and making their lives better. And so I went through a brief period where I was doing way too many things all at once, which was an absolutely awful idea. And I learned that at that point, in order to be a serial entrepreneur, by definition, you have to do one thing after the other. Otherwise, you're a parallel entrepreneur, and those never work, or it's difficult, at least. So, yeah, I kind of came out of that and tried to discover, like, where did my purpose lie? And pretty quickly landed upon using technology to help charities and not-for-profit organizations. And I did that for five years after starting Perth's and W.A.'s first social

enterprise technology consulting firm with my co-founder, Stephen. And yeah, it was really great, and we achieved a lot in that time. But it still didn't get to the point at which it was going to be sustainable for us long term and yet to a certain age. And you need to have, you know, financial security and things like that. And so we took the difficult decision at the end of last year that we were going to discontinue it. And I've now since accepted a full-time position, which has been the first job I've actually had in a full-time capacity. So other jobs I've had to include refereeing soccer games. But since, you know, being 16 or something, I've basically just been doing my own thing. So it's, yeah, now navigating this transition and trying to let go of

all that pressure to be extraordinary and relaxed back into embracing the ordinary, because, yeah, it's a pretty good ordinary life in Perth. That's amazing. What a journey. And I can so resonate with that also being kind of brought up in a space where I think it's a really good way of saying. I'm like feeling the need to be extraordinary to kind of fit in and be loved and all of that. Which is such a paradox.

Right. And yeah, it's strange how we have to kind of wind our way back to going like being human is enough like being and and being your shining your light in whatever capacity. Definitely. Even if it's not a full-time job, that's enough. So what has that been like for you now? Like, does it feel extraordinary in the way that it's ordinary or? Yeah, the transition back, you mean?

Like coming back to, yeah, I guess it's been like tough because there's a lot like laid in there, I suppose, like the letting go of the business that was kind of a part of me in the sense that when someone ask you, what are you up to? And, you know, inside you're like, am I doing enough? Am I like, you know, good enough? Do I deserve X, Y, Z? You go, well, oh, well, I've got my business. Like, therefore I must. And it, no, it's definitely difficult. But the thing that gives me hope, I guess, is, is like this thought that I think, I don't think humans are naturally overachievers. I don't think it's that we're naturally seeking more and we have to learn how to not seek I think that we're naturally happy with the status quo, you know, if our needs are met and we're

comfortable, and that it's usually that something makes us seek more, rather than, so it is that unlearning that you're kind of saying. But yeah, I think settling into this job, even using that as one example, it's definitely, it's pretty like weirdly emotional. This idea, especially going from entrepreneur where I'm getting paid conditionally based upon whether the customers like what I've done. And sometimes, you know, if you're unlucky, they might complain or, you know, refuse to pay your invoice or something like that to this model of, which is so foreign to me, where they pay on a two weekly basis and they have faith in me and they trust me. And like, I have security and I can plan my life forward. Like, so, yeah, I mean, in some ways it's hard letting go of the past and what I was doing.

but in other ways it feels so inevitable and so beneficial. Yeah, I think that makes complete sense to me. It's funny I'd be talking about this because this morning I had this thought like, I don't know if I'm naturally just actually quite like happy to do nothing. Maybe that's my artist's heart, you know, that's just like, happy to wake up, have my coffee, maybe write a little, knit a little, sing, make songs, you know, whatever it is. And like, do I chase all these things for a specific reason, you know? And it's like what you're saying.

I mean, we go and fetch these things for ourselves. I do believe we kind of look for things to help us grow or opportunities present themselves. And you're like, okay, cool, I'm going to go for this and see where it takes me, you know, and you grow as a person. But I do feel like naturally we just kind of, we're here to be and figure out what that is in the best way possible. But it's funny how life shapes you. This is a sticky note that I have on my mirror, which is like we're human beings,

not human doings, which is like such a simple one. But it's like, you know, sometimes it snaps you out of that mindset of like, I've got to do this, this, this, this, this. And the other thing that I think we have in common is that we both do business, but we also quite like the creative, the artsy stuff like that. So I write music. I have done poetry in the past, not so much at the moment. But I think that one of the things I found with entrepreneurship is the reason I got into it

in some ways was because I loved the creativity. And increasingly what I've discovered, over the last, say, five years, is that actually what I was seeking was art. And I just went into entrepreneurship because it was like the closest I could get to art in a form that I thought was going to pay me and was going to be a legitimate profession.

Because it's kind of like, you know, you're creating, you're doing new ideas, new things. And actually, because how busy I was doing the business, I didn't actually have time to do the art where it wasn't tied to business. It wasn't tied to profit. It wasn't tired to deliver. bring a certain outcome. It was just being and being present with an instrument and being like, oh, that sounds nice. You know, let me put those two chords together. And it's funny when you do

just relax into being how much still continues to emerge through you. And it's almost that that faith part, right, of like, if you just have faith that you yourself will naturally create, you know, that's the normal state for humans, then it's, it's nice to just watch that and see it come out rather than feel that you have to force it out, I suppose. Yeah, yeah, and I feel, I feel that so much. What do you say? Because it's almost like we channeling in a way, you know, it's like you allow that space for yourself to, for things to drop in because it's kind of seated in your

heart already. And I love this topic so I can carry on about it forever. No, please. But it's, it's, it is funny how we, I feel the same. I mean, the reason I started my businesses was to help my own autistic journey and now I am like empowering other artists and I don't have enough time for my own artistic journey you know so it's I was saying to the team you know I need to take like a day a week and I put that time aside and actually work on that so it's it's really weird how we kind of do

feel like we need to achieve in a lot of ways and perhaps it's about finding that validation out in the world of like hey if I can if other people can resonate with it then like you were saying earlier, then it means like I'm doing a good job, you know. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I was thinking, so I was speaking to a lot of friends over the weekend in preparation for this conversation, because I quite like just throwing ideas around and seeing what people think. And the idea that achievement isn't natural came to me from one of my friends, Kylie, who

kind of put it in terms of like an ancient tribal analogy. And kind of what came out of that conversation was, you know, if you're in a healthy tribe where a child is loved for and gets all it's, no. and, you know, feel securely attached and all these great things that we read about as being theoretically possible and self-help books. Maybe one day we'll actually discover them. But if you're this child and you want to, and if you say to your parents, like, oh, you know what, Mum, I'm going to go out and I'm going to slay the biggest woolly mammoth I can find. Like, that is so irrational. Like, if your needs are already being met, like, why would you say, I'm going to go out and do this

crazy thing that risks death? So this was her point around, like, usually achievement comes from a place of discomfort. There's got to be something wrong with that tribe or something wrong that makes you think, you know what, actually, I'm not just going to be present and be here. I'm going to run away and do some grand, big thing. And I think you're right. Sometimes it's that validation. But I kind of, I came up with like three different things that I think can lead people

to maybe adopt this achiever mindset. I think the first level is like the self. So if you think that I can only love myself once I've done X, Y, Z. So maybe we call that one like insecurity. Then the next one could be the interpersonal, the relationships where you think I can only be loved once I've reached this thing or done this thing. And that's kind of, you know, the validation or approval, whatever you want to call it. And then there's also that level of society at large being like, you must do this thing.

You know, this is an obligation, almost. And I think the interesting thing is that these challenges or these discomforts, achievement and overachievement isn't the only coping mechanism, I suppose, that people reach for. So even just like within the personal one of, you know, I'll be enough when I achieve this, another way of doing that is the sort of perfectionism,

which I guess is similar in some ways to overachievement, but it's kind of like almost a brother or like a cousin maybe of it. The bad one. Yeah, the bad one. The one that you don't want to speak to it, Christmas party, is because they make you feel terrible

about yourself and self-conscious. But the overachievement's kind of like, once I reach this point, then I'll be enough. The perfection's kind of like, if I look like this, if I do this, if I say this,

then I'll be enough. So it's kind of like the achievement's kind of like the long term into the future. It's kind of like if you picture a tightrope, right? like, and you're walking across a valley, the achievement's like, if I reach the other side of the valley, then I'll be enough. And the perfection's kind of saying, well, as long as I never lose my balance along the way, then I'll be enough. And I think some people go either way, but actually

what happens a lot of the time, like myself, and I know about you, but you kind of end up being both these things, which is just the worst combination, because not only are you like, I need to reach this goal, but you're like, I must follow these exact steps and I must look good doing it. And it's like, It's so debilitating because, you know, the successful entrepreneurs are the one that somehow managed to have the achievement without the perfection. They can just like throw stuff out there, see what takes off to their heart's content, and they're great. But, yeah, when you feel constrained like I do often, it's really tough.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that completely. And I'm laughing a lot. I mean, people for you can't see me. I'm giggling away here because I really resonated with that. I'm such a perfectionist and I've been an overachieve in my life. I've shared a lot of that now already, but it's like it's still ingrained in you in some way. You always have to make sure that you're aware of it.

And I feel that too, you know, it's kind of like exactly like you're saying with the type of, I kind of imagine myself like it's not okay. You can't fall like you can't like crawl on your hands like one hand by one hand to get to the other side. You have to do it in a certain way. And I've found it really took me a long time to shed perfection and get into this like 80, 20 rule where it's like, okay, cool, I got it to 80%, it's perfect, it's fine, it's just imperfectly perfect. Like, there is no such thing as perfection. And I think it's because a lot of us kind of tie our identities to these things.

So whether it's like you're sending out a slide deck and you want people to partner with you in some way and you're like, you've moved this little font from one thing to another and you're just all designing a website or whatever it is, it's so much of you in the world. but when you learn to detach from that and go, this is not me, it doesn't define my words, I'm safe, I'm happy and myself, then it's easy kind of to be like, cool, okay, it's not the end of the world to have misspelled something

or whatever it might be. So yeah, but it's a tough one. It's really, it's not easy to get past that. So is the solution to not put like yourself in the work or to do it without being attached? Like where's the balance that you've found in, you know, slide decks or whatever? Yeah, I think it's going, like, I'm going to sit down now, and there's like a message I need to get out into the world or something I need to say,

and it doesn't reflect necessarily on who I am as a person, but I can share my passion through it. And it's more about going, like, what is the outcome that needs to go from that? You know, like a slide deck, like someone's going to look at this, and they're not going to think about necessarily who Nicole is on the other side of this email. thinking about what they read in front of them, you know. And so, but yeah, it's taken actually a lot of like shedding for me around even just like we were talking about generational stuff that I was sitting with me going like, that's not

actually part of me. It's not part of my energy and it's not my whole energy bubble inside of me, you know. So I was laughing about what you're saying because a friend of mine sent me a thing on Instagram and he said, it's like every artist is sitting at home. trying to create this like music or whatever it is wondering is anyone going to love this you know and listen to it and then like every podcast is just like yeah and so for breakfast i had this and what oh my god just imagining that if you put it out into the universe that someone will come across it you know whether it's an alien you know traveling across the universe in the year 2300 and they

just find this little like CD that's got your podcast recorded on it and they extrapolate from that what life must have been like on that planet called earth yeah yeah it's a tough one, but I think we are very vulnerable beings. You know, I think being human is a very sense of experience, and I think that's what makes it so tough for us, because we do end up kind of getting constricted in our minds. And yeah, so what have you found? Like, have you been, have you had like things that you do to help you with that? Or I don't know. I think it's, yeah, I think a lot, which is both a blessing and a curse. So, I mean, I often try and think myself out of spirals. But that doesn't always work.

Some, like, one of the recent learnings I've had is how much is in the body. Because I've always been a very cognitive person. I always, you know, in some ways I think that I feel about 50 years old. I'm 26, but I feel about double that. Just because the sheer quantity of thoughts I've had, you know, and talking to, yeah, a friend about this, she was saying, she's a psychologist and she was saying, oh, I meet a lot of, you know, 40, 50 year old people who are having these crises of, I've done everything that was ever on my vision board, and yet I feel empty.

And so I was kind of like, well, I guess it's good then that I've reached that half the age. As long as me hitting my midlife crisis at 26 doesn't mean that my life expectancy is 52. That wouldn't be great. But I'm sure it doesn't. I'm sure it just means that I have more time, you know, trying to recalibrate, I suppose. And yeah, I think that once you reach or once you achieve or see on the horizon, you thought you ever wanted and you experience it and it's not what you thought it was it. Yeah, that's that's one of those things where you could, you know, read books and things like that

that talk about overachievement and why it's not effective and all this. And you can kind of cognitively understand it, but there's really nothing like actually just reaching this thing that you thought was going to make you feel a certain way and realizing that, oh, actually, it didn't make me feel like that at all. I just felt tired and burnt out. That makes you go, oh, I need to like fundamentally change the way that I think about living and being. And yeah, at certain points, I've described it to people as like, you know, the Taylor Swift song, which like, I'm sorry, Taylor can't come to the phone right now. Oh, why? She's dead. It's like, I'm sorry. Like, James from 2021 can't come to the phone right now. Why? Because he's dead. Like, genuinely, like, that person just didn't exist. And I found that I couldn't even

motivate myself to do the things I was doing previously because I was increasingly aware of the cost to myself because I'd seen it. Yeah, it felt inevitable that I was going to reach that point, but I don't know. I was reading a lot of, you know, psychology, philosophy kind of books. And, yeah, sometimes you just have to reach that point where it's too much and it changes you. Yeah, I think life is experiential. It's like you're saying now, you have to kind of experience it, You know, you can understand the theory, but until you feel it in your body, yeah, and you're like, well, actually, I do have no more energy left. And I actually am not enjoying this or whatever it is, that that experience.

And I always like to talk about like the vibration, you know, like we just the energy blob. And either you're feeling like you're vibrating well and it helps your health, your health and whatever else. But if it's not feeling good, then, you know, that's the point where we, I think our mind kind of kick into gear and go like, oh, okay, this is, let me halt. And it's funny that we have to kind of do it that way around, right? And I know a lot of books kind of say, bypass the mind, go to your heart. Maybe that is a really nice way to do it. I mean, it sounds good. I don't know if I could do that so easily. But I mean, that is one of the words I have for this year is like intuition, like trying to, yeah, listen less to my head, because my head's always most of the time

pretty noisy, you know, kind of just feeling what feels right. But yeah, it's tough when you're a very cognitive person, I don't know. It is, it is. And I think, but I love that, like, the feeling right, because I think you always kind of know where you need to go. And coming back to what you said earlier, it's like the trust and the faith. Like you had trust and faith in yourself kind of to build things and now other people have trust and faith in you.

But it's, once you learn how to trust your. in the decisions you take, you know, that are good for you, that that's, I think that's joy. Like, I think that's happening. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's another lesson. I think I've learned, actually just like this week and I kind of thought about this. I was thinking about, you know, all this achievement. And previously I would have said that I'm not a very, like, not a person that has a lot of faith that things are going to be all right. You know, I'm a bit of a warrior. I get in my head. I can be a bit anxious. I can get panicked. But I realized that I was kind of, I had this achievement mindset where I thought that once I reached a certain thing, that

everything was going to be okay. And I kind of re-framed and I thought about it. I'm like, hang on, that's almost a kind of faith. Like, maybe I am capable of this faith. It's just I need to kind of pivoted away from being everything's going to be okay because you're going to do this and it's going to solve everything to being, you know, everything's going to be okay. I mean, ideally everything's going to be okay because this is okay.

you know, even if it's uncomfortable, it's okay. Or at the very least, it's going to be okay because I can't handle it, you know? Yeah, so realizing that maybe I can do that was kind of an eye opener as well. I love that. I love that so much. I'm glad you could reach that point. Like, it's, yeah, I mean, you say it so lightly,

but I think it's quite a deep, like, realization in yourself, you know? Yeah, definitely. On that point, I actually want to move into a little segment that we do every week and it's called the gems because I feel like that's such a gem that you're already mentioning but just to dig a little bit deeper on the things that we've learned in the week so it might be something you've learned or even just something that you feel like you have gratitude for or that's happened so for me it's been I think we kind of touched on this earlier but it's just realizing that for growth to happen I need to like shed the generational stuff you

know, and sometimes when you're moving forward in your life, things come up and like, it might be in your body, maybe it's something that's like, I don't know, a pain that you carried on in your DNA from a previous generation or it could be thoughts like conditioning or something like that and just seeing them for what they are and going, okay, actually not me, it's nothing to do with me, I know who I am. And then the most important part is like actually letting it go, the relieving part. you know, which I think is often hard. I have this new saying that I do,

it's like whatever's not meant for me, I will gently fade away, emphasis on gently, and I will allow it to do so. So it's been working really well for me, but yeah, that's been my, I like that.

What's been yours? I think lots of things, I've had such many, so many interesting conversations with my friends. I think really thinking back about this idea that I've had a while ago, like around the past and a few, being mirrors to the present.

Because I think different people kind of spend different fractions of their life in different mindsets. There are the people that I envy who spend all of their time being completely present. There are the people who maybe focus a bit more on the past, like, oh, do you remember when it was like this, you know, smartphones aren't what they used to be or, you know, back in my day? Then you've got the people who, you know, always worried about the next thing or they talk in terms of like, oh, like, what do you do? And you say, oh, I'm building the world's next greatest company that's going to do blah, blah, blah, blah.

and, you know, they're kind of where their soul lies is almost in the future. And so I tend to be a little bit towards that camp of I'm always thinking about the next thing worrying about, like, how am I going to make sure that it goes exactly right? Because if it doesn't, then, oh, my goodness, everything's going to be absolutely awful. And I think for me, trying to see that the value of the past and the present is almost to reflect back inwards. So, you know, if you're thinking about getting a new job, then maybe what it tells you about the present is that you don't feel financially secure. If you're looking back at past relationships, then maybe what that's telling you is that you feel lonely. And sometimes it's easier

and less confronting to think in those terms of like what's, what is what do I see in the future, what I see in the past, and then to come back rather than just kind of thinking, I feel lonely. Like that's almost a confronting thought to have, for example. So yeah, I think that's been a useful little, little trick. And then the other one that I, I, realized, life is full of great realizations. This was from my other friend Stephen was challenging me. He was saying, like, oh, so what does healthy achieving look like? And it was like, well, what if it's the idea of, it's not the destination, it's the journey. But then my thought on that was that, well, hang on, like some people, sure, there are some people that tie their self-worth,

self-esteem, all that sort of stuff to the achievement. But it could be equally dangerous to tie your self-worth to being on a journey. For example, you know, whether you're the person that says, I'm going to feel enough when I shed 10 kilos, or I'm going to feel enough when I'm doing a diet consistently to reach 10 kilos, they're almost equally dangerous because in both cases, you're not listening to what you want at each stage. And you might be unwilling to let go of that journey or that goal. And I think, so what it was almost comes down to is it's not the destination, it's not the journey, it's actually like just the step. You know, it's just like being willing and free at each step along the way to choose what, what you want or what you need.

And having achievement be something that you don't set in stone and go, this is where I'm going, I must go there. And it's all great at the start, right, because you're going, I'm excited, I've set my new year's resolution, I'm working towards this thing. And initially you're doing it for you because you love yourself and you want to do this great thing. You think, oh, wouldn't it be cool if I could like rap or like do something great? And then you start it. And then you realize once you get into the process, like, oh my goodness, I actually slur my words a lot. Like the consonants are really difficult. Or running is a good example. Right. Like at the start, you're like, yeah, I'm so excited. But then three months in, you just like hate it. You know, you get up and you go, oh my goodness,

I've got to go for another run. And so like, it's that really difficult to spot transition between doing it for you and doing it to you, that if you're not present, you're not going to catch. And then you're just kind of in this deficit that you've artificially created for yourself where you're less happy because you're kind of pushing off the joy and the happiness to some, you know, potential future moment that may or may not come. And even if you do reach it, because you've been so used to living in the future rather living in the present, you're probably not even going to appreciate it fully. So, yeah, I don't know.

I've just been thinking about that and trying to have. goals and achievements be something that you don't pursue as much as you observe them. You kind of say like at the moment, oh, at the moment I've got this goal of writing a song. And then the next day you wake up and you go, huh, like I no longer have that goal of writing this song rather than like, I've got this goal and I'm not pursuing it today, I'm doing badly, or I've got this goal and I'm working towards it and I feel good. Kind of, yeah, treating it more as like a description rather than a prescription. Yeah. Oh, I love that. I feel like that. I feel like

Like that's really the definition of being in the presence is going, like taking every second, every moment, every day at a time and seeing what still aligns. Because we're changing all the time, right? I mean, faster than we probably realize and while you're sleeping, it's like accelerating. So I think that's amazing advice. And you know, I feel the same. It's when I was younger I had these goals and was like lists of things. And I did them and it was great and I did more than them.

But now my goal was like for the years, it's like the word bloom. I just believe, you know, like what does that look like every day and enjoy that, that process, you know. That's amazing. Yeah. So I really love that. And I also want to ask you one more question on that. Because I'm sure along the journey of discovering all these things you mentioned reading some books. So we have a reading list, which is called the stack.

And I want to ask you what's in your stack. So maybe part of your goals is reading some more books that's on your pile. or maybe you've got some that you'd like to recommend to the audience. But it's... Yeah. Definitely. I've got the... My number one book that I like the most right now is...

It's by Oliver Berkman. So Oliver Berkman wrote 4,000 weeks, which I love about, you know, living intentionally for the 4,000 weeks that the average person will have on Earth. But he's recently released a new book called Meditations for Mortals, which one way of describing it is kind of... well, the subtitle of it is stop trying to sort your life out, start living. And it's basically all about

like letting go of, you know, all this effort that you put into like trying to be perfect and having all this sort of stuff and just embracing the chaos. And he kind of uses the analogy of like trying to kayak through a sea storm. You know, like you shouldn't be trying to like actually get someone. Just paddle in the direction you want to paddle. See where you get to. But yeah, embrace it. And yeah, And there's so many things that seem counterintuitive, but in the other books that you read about how to be productive, efficient, and effective, you know, it might be something about inbox zero, right, where, oh, you know, what you've got to do is when an email comes in,

responds straight away, blah, blah, blah. But what he explains, and he compares it to the boulder of Sisyphus in the Greek mythology of pushing this boulder up the hill, because the problem with responding to emails is the more that you send off, the more that you're going to get back. and so sometimes sometimes in order to feel what you've got more space in time you actually have to do the opposite of that

and just I don't know kind of letting it go and there's lots of great bite-sized lessons in there and yeah it's a really quick read you can read it in a week or a weekend if like I did even though he says that he recommends that you space them out and reflect on them

obviously I didn't do that I just dived in you'll be overachieve it yeah of course yeah I was like well if I just read this book then I'll be enough. So I've got to read it quickly. That's a great recommendation. Thank you so much. I'm excited to read that because that feels

very much up the alley of what we're talking about, but also the feels life that we wish for everyone. So we'll be adding that to the stack. So for those who are listening, you can head over to the website and all the books that we recommend on the podcast are there and you can click on them and buy them. And I also just want to ask everyone, kind of, what are you feeling about this topic? You know, after listening to the discussion and thinking about where you might be feeling stuck and the decisions you're making or, you know, getting yourself stuck in a rut unnecessarily. And where is it maybe time to flow and be in the present?

So on that, I also want to say thank you to the people who do make this flow and this conversation possible, and that is our partners, RSS.com, and who are our platform that we distribute this podcast through into the world. And then also Blender Bums, which is a nutritious snack. And they've given our audience a 20% discount if you order with the code, the feels. And you can also DMS more on the socials about that and some other really exciting partnerships coming up. And then very last, but not least, I want to do a quick shout out to what we do every week. And that is our people, places and spaces. So James, it's like we pick someone or an organization or, you know, it could be anything that we feel have the fields.

And so one of my other ventures, the many that I'm also working on, is called Be Live. And we are starting to host more and more experiences for people to get together in person and connect around music and art and nature. And recently had a really awesome call with the guy from Shotgun, Partnerships Head, Jules here in France. And I just want to say thank you so much. He's such an awesome human. And it's not often that you get on a partnership call and have that kind of very real and real experience.

So shout out to Shotgun and to Jules especially. And yeah, so that kind of wraps up to an end. Yeah, and I want to say thank you to you for coming on and just sharing so honestly, so openly. And like, yeah, it's so wonderful to hear what your journey has been. and I'm sure whatever where you're flowing with life will find a way to make that extraordinary.

Yeah, no, it's been an absolute pleasure making the time zones work and hopefully I'm not the first and not the last Aussie that you get on to make sure we're well represented in the Parisian scene. And I'll have to catch up when I'm over in Paris come to one of these experiences.

They sound very cool. That'd be awesome. Do you let me know. and then we can make a plan. And yeah, thank you so much also again. And hope to also make it to Australia sometime again. You absolutely should. And there's a direct flight now from Paris to Perth.

So no excuses. No excuses. Okay. Awesome. Well, we'll check each other soon, soon. And happy feels to you. Happy feels. If you haven't just yet, follow Friday Feels on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok.

and LinkedIn, you can share with us all your fields this week by tagging us at Fridayfeels.com. And you can also find the website at that handle. And now, as you ease into this weekend, take a moment. Celebrate who you've become, what you've overcome and what is yet to come as you do, the crazy and cool things that you do, as the authentic you. You know the truth about life and workers that it's hard, but the beauty is this global working experience that you're in while we earn it together.

So keep connecting, empowering and inspiring this week. And of course, keep it raw and real. Until next time.