January 27, 2026 • 39 mins
Christian and the team kick off a big morning with world class mindset coach and storyteller Ben Crowe, the man behind Ash Barty, Steph Gilmore and other elite performers. Across an honest, funny and disarmingly deep chat, Ben unpacks what a mindset coach actually does, why we’re so distracted by things we can’t control, and how he helps people shift from “human doing” to human being. He explains the ancient but practical principles behind his new book and Mojo app, and why stories, not self help theory, are the most powerful way we learn and change.
From Ash Barty learning to separate her ranking from her self worth, to Andre Agassi and Tiger Woods, to hospital teams and students, Ben shares real examples of how reframing identity, worthiness and potential can transform performance and happiness. Christian also dives into Ben’s idea of our “natural play state”, the five feelings that define it, and how getting back to playful, carefree curiosity can help with everything from Grand Slam finals to launching a national radio show.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
I Heeart podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
You can hear more Gold one I four point three podcasts,
playlist and listen live on the free iHeart app. Got
anything Good?
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Hey, this is the Christian O'Connell Show podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
My special guest this morning is the world's most in
demand mindset coach. It is Ben Crow.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Ben. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Thank you, Christian, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yea, I know you're someone I've got to know the
last couple of years. If a lot of people don't
recognize the name, how would you describe what you do?
And I've read the book and I don't like titles,
and we'll get to that in a minute, But how
would you describe what is a mindset coach?
Speaker 3 (00:53):
I guess I try and help people with their mindset
on the field in a professional sense, to find confidence
in their skills with belief in a personal sense, to
believe in their potential and find that balance between I
guess confidence and happiness and achievement with fulfillment. We're so
distracted today as human beings, focusing on all these things
we can't control, wanting to control the create. It's emotional
(01:14):
pressure or outcome pressure, right, So I guess a mindset.
Coach helps identify where the distractions are coming and they're
different for all of us, right, and try and find
the freedom to compete, have fun and play and as
human beings. I guess that's what we should all be doing,
whether an athlete or a student.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
And how did you get into this line of work?
You know you're Australian. How did you even end up
in America working with mister Nike, Phil Knight, Shootdog?
Speaker 1 (01:37):
How did that happen?
Speaker 3 (01:40):
My dad passed away when I was sixteen, I reckon,
I've always had this curiosity to try and just make
sense of the world and find more meaning and perspective.
And then at Uni I studied anthropology and philosophy and English,
and at the time I was saying, when the hell
am I ever going to use these three disciplines. I
didn't realize at the time that philosophy is the study
of wisdom, anthropologies the study of humans and human behavior,
(02:02):
and English is kind of prioritize as storytelling. Then I
joined Nike, which is kind of a storytelling company. And
I noticed at Nike that there are all these athletes
that were so extrinsically motivated in terms of money, and
fame and status and recognition. They lost sight of why
they fell in love with the sport in the first place.
And a lot of our athletes went off the rails,
(02:23):
and some of them are more famous than others, you know,
Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong. And I noticed that athletes that
went the other way, that went internal, not external, and
Andre Agassi is a very good case study. Ashbadi is
a very good case study here in Australia. Albert to
separate what they did from who they were, like the
human doing from the human being, and their identity became
less about what they did and more about their intrinsic motivations,
(02:46):
and that just fascinated me. I suddenly realized there's no
such thing as a human being school where you can
kind of learn these principles, and that took me on
a very different journey from more internal storytelling. When I
came back to Australia, I just continued to mentor a
lot of athletes that I used to work with it
at Nike, and then that morphed into mentoring coaches and
then athletes teams, executive teams. During COVID, it kind of
(03:09):
just went crazy and I started morphed into hospitals and
universities and the World Health Organization. And yeah, I've kind
of been on a journey ever since then. And I
guess I've just had time during COVID to codify these
principles into a framework that created the Mojo app. And
then the last year I've had the time most of
my athletes retired, whether it's Danny Ricardo or Ashbardi, Dylan Orcott,
(03:30):
Steph Gilmore and gave me time to kind of okay,
if I'm ever going to write this book, And I
guess my work lends itself to long form storytelling, and
I thought this is the time to write the book.
You had something to do with it, Christian.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Oh ready, Sorry, it takes I've just finished writing my book.
It takes a lot to write a book. But the
great news is everything you want to do. It feels
like a conversation with you, Ben. It's a great book.
And I've read lots of different transformational books. What puts
your book about all of them is this isn't theory.
Every story, every perspective shift that you're harping us with
(04:05):
throughout the book has got real world examples that you've
been part of or if you've got a story about
and so it feels more real, it feels that it's
something like, oh I could do that, I understand that.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
And so it's crammed with stories.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Yeah, and that's deliberate because I think stories is how
we learn as humans, and we're living through an information
era with technology and reports and it is but stories,
which taps into our imagination, moves it from an intellectual
understanding to an emotional understanding. You know, we are the
stories we tell ourselves about others. But when we can
hear stories from others, especially imperfect stories of how people
(04:42):
overcame adversity and so forth. But getting back to the book,
I realized a long time ago that these principles are
two thousand years old, and if you study sociology, psychology, philosophy, anthropology, theology,
there's these kind of principles that exist across all of them.
And I think the one skill that I feel that
I have is kind of pattern recognition understanding. Okay, this
(05:06):
is appearing across all these different signs, all these different
ologies and isms. If there's a way that I can
simplify this kind of practical wisdom and remove the mystique
in a really simple and practical way. I think that
was the opportunity with these perspective shifts in the book.
And then I guess over the last twenty thirty years,
I've literally been working with athletes and teams using these
(05:26):
exact principles, right, and then more recently with you know,
hospitals and universities and schools. So it's exciting. While I
initially started with the lead athletes at Nike, to your
question that now it's kind of an opportunity for the
whole world to get access to some of these works.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, to me, it's grounded in the every day and
what's going is this post The whole book really is
you walking us through how to shift perspectives. And I
guess most of everything in our life is perspectives. And
when you think about it and you challenge your perspectives
and assumptions, invariably they're wrong. We we just don't got
the time. You're just overwhelmed getting through the day. You're
(06:00):
never ending to do list. The great thing about reading
your book is that actually invites you to slow down.
I found myself slowing down and actually I'm quite a
quick my age to.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Read this book.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
I've read it twice because you can see here there's
one there's so many notes in this The perspective shifts.
Is that what you think most of us need? That's
where we're struggling when we talking about being stuck in
our lives or at work or at home.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Is that what you think it is?
Speaker 3 (06:23):
I do very much. So Yeah. Perspective by definition means
the way you see something or your attitude towards something. Right,
So am I stuck at home? Am I safe at home?
Do I get to do this? Or I have to
got to do this? So our perspective literally guides our
entire life, So choosing it wisely is pretty important.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Right?
Speaker 3 (06:40):
But where do you go to learn these things? Whether
my perspective is right or wrong? And there's nothing more
exciting for me. And that's why I called the book
where the light gets in. When someone has this Eureka moment,
this aha moment where they realized where they were going
wrong in terms of their mindset and their perspective, and
they can reframe either their sense of self, a sense
of worth, their role as a leader, what they thought
(07:03):
was expected of them in life versus what isn't expected
of them, and while every chapter as a mindset to
shift and a problem to solve, they all share a
common theme, which is very much about learning to identify
and accept the things we can't control and focus the
limited time we have left on this planet on the
things we can control and the best version of ourselves.
(07:25):
Most of us don't know what the best version of
ourselves is. We're so focused on the human doing we
haven't really connected back with the human being. And the
book really shows you how to do that. So you
don't feel like you have to continue to achieve something
or do something in order to be someone. You can
be content. You're not done yet. You've got all these
goals and dreams you want to chase down, but your
self worth isn't determined on whether you get there or not.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
See that's a big thing though, because of social media.
I think it makes this well, because we're fed a
fake version of other people. You know, you watch a
video that's probably the twentieth version they've done off film
in that video, and you think that's their real life,
and so it creates this massive disconnection, so you feel
even more stuck in a way. So I'm never going
to get to that social media doesn't help.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Yeah, I think the biggest distraction I've noticed globally, and
social media is part of it. It's a focus on
extrinsic motivations for our self worth. Typically that's money, fame, status,
and recognition. And when we go external for our self worth,
we become externally socially determined, not self determined, but if
(08:32):
we can become intrinsically motivated right and focus on the
things we can control and the best version of ourselves.
But it happens way before media and social media and
consumerism and materialism. It actually starts back in the education
system Christian like in grade three in most countries around
the world, that's when grading gets introduced. And that's when
(08:53):
kids like a nine year old girl or boy shifts
their perspective from playing with numbers and playing with shapes
to extrinsically motivated because suddenly there's grades, and suddenly my
parents who are interested in my grades, and suddenly I'm
not in that class anymore. I'm in that class. A
nine year old boy or girl. They're too young because
from that moment on, they believe they have to do
(09:13):
something or achieve something in order to be someone, and
that continues through secondary school and then the workforce and
so forth. So the goal is to help I mean,
be fantastic in grade three. If kids could develop a
to be list rather than a to do list, I love.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
That in the book.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Tell us a bit more about that though, because we've
all got the to do list. But what's the ben
version of that, the to be list?
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Yeah, kind of identified it during the pandemic a lot,
I'd say to a lot of clients, Right, regardless of
you're whether you're religious or you're believe in God, it's
just a shame for the purpose the world's trying to
tell us something with his pandemic. I'd always ask them
the same question, what do you reckons? She's trying to say, right,
And that also the same thing in their own words,
they reckon the world's trying to tell us to stop
(09:56):
doing and obsessing doing and start being, you know, to
do less and to be more, be more connected to
myself or family or nature. And they said they wanted
to just stop saying busy when someone says, how are
you right? And so, because if you think about it, Christian,
if you feel like you have to do something or
achieve something, right with this is a radio show or whatever.
In order to be someone, you'll never be fulfilled, you'll
(10:19):
never be content, you'll never feel like you're enough, you'll
never have unconditional love because it's always conditional, not having
to do something or achieve something. So what we suggest
is like, rather than start the morning with a to
do list, is write your own to be list. Because
whatever words you write down next against your to be list.
Let's say Christian wants to be playful or grateful, right,
(10:41):
or kind or courageous? Right, it doesn't matter, it's your list,
But whatever words you write down next, you're in total
control of that human being. There's so many things in
your life you can't control, but the human that you
want to be is not one of them, and that
can become your definition of success. Right in whatever form
you show up in, either as a dad or as
a husband, or as a radio producer or as a leader,
(11:03):
if you are playful and grateful and kind and courageous,
that's been a successful day relative to the things you
can control.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, it's so inch because for a lot of us band,
who we are is largely situational, Like if things are
going well, the meeting's going well, but the moment you're
feeling being judged or you did something wrong, you made
a mistake, we kind of lose ourselves and you're stuck
in some story of without even realizing you're not there
in the room. Suddenly a fifteen year old version of
yourself turned up, you know, and you're incredibly reactive and
(11:32):
people don't know what to do around you and that
and it all happens so quickly.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yeah, and that's where self acceptance and self compassion come in.
So part of the first part of the journey is
really making sense of your story and working out who
you are and letting go of who you're not and
start to celebrate yourself and celebrate your imperfections and your quirks,
and bring self compassion along the ride too, so you
can be kinder and gentle to yourself. Right, you can
(11:56):
be totally committed but fully detached from the outcome. You're
not attention, you're not attaching your self worth to your
role or you know, we're achievements and things you're going
to do in your.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Love Tell them about this then.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
One of the most impactful chapters in your book for me,
and I've told the whole team to start in the
middle of your book is the one going from fear
to play. And I don't think it's just unique to me.
I think for a lot of us, whether you've got
pressure at home or whatever business you do, there's some
form of pressure in your life and our relationship to
pressure and fear. You do a great job in one chapter.
(12:29):
It really made me think about things differently over the
last couple of weeks. I'm very grateful that chapter. What
could you tell people listening right now about how you
reframe fear and pressure?
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Yeah, well, that was also my favorite chapter to write
as well, and I love what you said about you
don't need to pick up this book and read it sequentially.
You can look at the perspective shifts and you think instinctively,
you're going to know which one are really struggling with
right now. From a leader, it might be from Ida Weo,
the hero's journey, where you realize that life's not about
you but the impact you can have on someone else's life.
(13:01):
But the play chapter was so much fun for me
to write and research, and I learned so much when
I was writing that chapter as well, in particular the
relationship between play and love, which we'll get to. But
to answer your question, the opposite of play isn't work.
The opposite of play is fear. So, as humans we're
either in the playstate orin the fear state. We don't
(13:23):
call it fear. We typically call it pressure or stress
or sleep, deperation, and so forth. So the first thing
a lot of my clients say to themselves is am
I in the playstate? Or am I in the fear state?
And regardless of how they answer that question, they then
say to themselves, what does play look like for me? Here?
As humans, we're designed by nature to play, but we've
just lost that up on. We think play is table tennis, yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Or you think is something you did at school and
actually the work of being a grown up. It's very
serious with big consequences, though you must. If you're not
exhausted on the version of burnout or hustling, you're not
doing it right.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Totally, totally. So I say in the book that play
needs a rebrand. It does because it's fundamental to human existence.
You think about this radio show, you think about any
success you've had in your life. Everything you're doing is
play based, right, And the simplest way to get into
play is to smile and be curious. The curiosity keeps
(14:16):
you in the playstate. It takes agency back, and it
turns adversity into possibility. Okay, how do I get through this?
Who can help me? Where to from here? But there
are different forms of play. Curiosity play is the simplest one.
We can simply ask yourself what if? Right, Just start
a question with what if we did this? What if
you put a commander around Australia?
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Right?
Speaker 3 (14:36):
What if we know? You seriously start with what if
and understanding how powerful the what if question was? And
you read the chapter right, So we tell some beautiful stories.
When Nike signed Michael Jordan, all basketball shoes had to
be white, right, and if they had any color then
he'd be banned and they'd find five thousand dollars a game. Well,
a young designer in the meeting said, what if we
did it anyway? What if we put more black and
(14:58):
red in Michael Jordan's shoes, and what if we paid
the fines? And what if we made an ad about it?
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Right?
Speaker 3 (15:03):
And within three months it became the number one shoe
in the world. So simply asking what if is a
really powerful way to get into that the playstate.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Yeah, and letting that curiosity be the engine that drives
everything in your life.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
It's a better way to be in the world.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Yeah, Right Now, it were all very.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Fixed in our opinions, aren't we You're right, you think this,
you're wrong, and so we're really rigid and you get
trapped in that.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Absolutely, Yeah, And understanding our play history is one of
the most helpful ways to get into our natural playstate. Right. So,
when young Christian was growing up, he loved to do
different things, right. It might have been sport, it might
have been music, might have been comedy, he might have
been talking so forth. So you start to understand what
litch you up as a young boy, and typically you'll
get an understanding of the career you're doing right now
(15:43):
in radio is linked back to the various passions and
hobbies and curious things that young Christian had. But you
also had a natural playstate. And the way we do that,
as we explain in the book, is everyone's got an
early play memory. And early, by the way, can be
last week. It doesn't have to be when I was
ten years old. Yeah, you identify on early play memory
and it could be a photograph, right that you're looking
(16:04):
back on, and then you identify the words that best
represents how you were feeling in that memory. And having
done this thousands of times around the world, typically there's
five states that people identify in their own language. Obviously,
the first one is playful. The second one is feeling
free or carefree. Yeah, the next one is feeling kind
of excited or adventurous. The fourth one is feeling safe
(16:27):
or warm or a sense of belonging connected, and the
fifth one is loved. And a psychiatrist asked me when
I was giving a talk in London a few years ago, Ben,
why do these same five states keep appearing whenever someone
does his exercise? And I said, I don't know. It's
above my pay grade, but maybe, just maybe, as human beings,
(16:48):
that's who we are. Before we get pimples and we
think we've got to fit into a tribe or you know,
the fear of being rejected from the tribe, we were playful, carefree, excited, safe, warm,
belonged and loved. And if we can get back into
that natural play state, right, because it turns if we're
in the fear state, we're in that quartizole state. If
we're in the play state. It's curiosity, create, experimentation, serendipity. Right.
(17:11):
I feel like every time you and I catch up, Christian,
you are naturally in the playstate. It doesn't mean you
don't go into the fear state. Because we're all human, right,
We're all in perfect We'll have pressures and expectations that
we get distracted by, but for the most part, knowing
you've got the power to get yourself back into the playstate.
Whether you're playing a Grand Slam tennis final or you know,
a radio show going national, it's really really powerful if
(17:33):
you understand how to harness that as well.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Oh, it really helped me the last couple of weeks
thinking about launching the show nationally last week.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
It was a big difference.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
That Tell me about your work with Ash Barty, What
did that look like?
Speaker 1 (17:44):
What were the big shifts you could help her with?
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Yeah, so the first part, and Ash was probably the
most curious out that I've ever worked with, and also
the most stubborn and the most vulnerable.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Now, while they must all be, they must all the
outletes you've worked with, you know, he're all world class,
elite performers.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Surely they must.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Share some commonalities very much. So there must be stubborn,
very determined and probably quite hard on themselves as well.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Yeah, absolute, yeah. And there's a good stubborn and a
bad stubborn. There's a good stubborn who just want to
accept mediocrity and wants to get put themselves, and there's
a bad stubborn that doesn't want to lean in. And
you know, deep down she knows what she wants to do,
but she'll be stubborn towards it. But the first date
was Ash just getting to understand who she was, the
human being that was. She was so defined by a
ranking right unranked one hundred in the world or two
(18:29):
hundred in the world and so forth, and you know
that's a bit of a mind screw when you just
your whole identity is linked to a number and a
grading and so forth. So separating the person from the
persona is really important for Ash and identifying the beliefs
that are holding her back. And typically there's two core
beliefs Christians that hold not just athletes back, but teenagers back,
help all of us back. The first belief she had
(18:51):
to develop was to believe that she was worthy no
matter what, just as she is right, because then she
could trust whether she wins or loses a game of tennis,
or wins or losers in life, it's all good because
she's enough just as she is right now. She was
able to develop that quite easily just by remembering her
relationationship with her parents, who used to say to her
as a young girl, I love to what you play.
(19:14):
That was it. It was unconditional. It wasn't conditional whether she
won or lost. So reminding herself of those stories and
the connections that she has enabled her to have that
unconditional love. That's foundational for anyone, right because that thing
gives you the courage to live a life true to
you and to follow the second belief, which is to
believe in her potential and trust if she keeps chipping away,
(19:34):
things will turn out. I say to a lot of people,
for Ashbarty, winning Wimbledon wasn't success. Believing she was worthy
to win Wimbledon. That was her definition of success, and
that happened six months earlier at a cafe in Brisbane
called Moomos Right, So establishing the.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Beliefs where epiphanies happened over a.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Few beers and a few tears right. So once she
could develop belief in herself and learn self acceptance because
as you said, we're really hard on ourselves as human beings.
So she had to accept her imperfections, accept her body
image except where she is, except her you know, education,
So just accept everything about herself that she wasn't accepting.
(20:12):
And we're either accepting or with suffering. We don't again
call it suffering, right, So developing a self acceptance list
for Ash was groundbreaking and life changing for her because
it created a boundary to be kinder and gentler with
herself and not take herself or life so seriously. Then
she could develop confidence in her skills and learned to
(20:32):
accept the things she can't control, which is outcomes and
so forth, and focus on the things she can control. Intension, effort,
and mindset are typically the three things that in a
performance sense, we can control, and then develop a set
of words that reminds her of the best version of herself.
And for Ash then it was very much about treating
this life as a career as an adventure, right, and
(20:53):
then playing with it, and everywhere she went she was
trying to play and have fun, and she had practical
jokes with her team. You know, there's very famous. At Wimbledon,
she answered every question at press conference with a Disney
quote and see if the journalists would get you know,
and we gave her the quote before she walked into
the room. So she's just you know, she plays Where's
Wally at the Australian Open, you know, because their photos everywhere.
(21:16):
So just having fun with the journey for Ash was
really really important as well.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah, one of the most impactful stories for me was
the stories in the book about your work was Stephanie Gilmore.
And I knew who she was because you know, she's
won so many world titles, but the story about her
I wasn't familiar with the story of her being attacked.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Yeah, tell us about that. This is an incredible story and.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Just how how she used it for growth, which I'm
not sure I would have been able to do that
suffering something as horrific as that.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yeah, Steph was probably the first athlete that I worked
with back in twenty twelve, two thousand and thirteen, and
that kind of took me on this journey the first time.
I used a lot of these principles and yeah, Steph
reached out through her sponsors and her family and Yeah.
In twenty twelve, after winning her third world title, she
(22:09):
got attacked by a random drug addict just after Christmas
out of the front of her apartment, attacked her with
a hammer and broke her skull and broke her arm,
and she went off the tour obviously and lost her confidence,
but also lost her innocence and then had to find
a way back in. And so a lot of our sessions,
especially in twenty twelve and twenty thirteen, was just trying
(22:31):
to find meaning through this adversity, because you know, we
can't reframe history, but we can reframe our interpretation of
it and find a meaning and you know, find some
values or find out more about ourselves and so forth.
So she was so caught up in the persona of
who she was, Stephanie Gilmo, the surfer, but she wanted
to understand the person as well and be more purpose
driven and values based, still performance focused. So she went
(22:54):
on this incredible journey of self discovery and self reflection
and introspection and then went back on the tour and
then very quickly won another four five world titles and
now she's the greatest surfer of all time. But through
that process The reason your greatest growth comes from from
your darkest times, and Steph knows this very well, is
because it unlocks three things. It unlocks humility because it
(23:18):
just grounds you in the brutal facts of your reality.
You know, five seconds earlier, as she was a three
time world champion surfer and suddenly she's in hospital, right,
so you know, life is what happens while you're busy
making other plans. As Steph realized, once the humility grounds
you in the brutal facts of your reality and then
unlocks curiosity. Okay, what happens now? How am I going
(23:38):
to get through this? Do I want to keep surfing?
You do want to do something else? That curiosity that
we mentioned from the place though, but it also unlocks
your core values because Steph had to dive deep into
a deep source, deep energy source, to overcome this adversity
and find the courage to keep going. So for Steph,
was that was love, that was courage, and that was
(23:59):
play from memory were her three core values. That she
could ground herself with those values and say what does
love look like for me today? Or what does courage
look like for me today? And then armed with that
she can put herself back out into the world and
then again find her. She did a beautiful job of
finding her early play memories, which we talk about in
the book. In the book, when she was four years
old in the kitchen floor, her mum's pottering around the
(24:21):
kitchen and her dad's trying to teach her how to
play the ukulele, and then the words she came and
she goes back to that memory often is just to
remind herself to be playful and loved and carefree and
excited and so forth. So, yeah, she taps into the play.
The play stayed incredibly and there's a beautiful chapter in
the book about how she won her world title, turning
(24:42):
the whole thing into a game and having fun with
it and so forth. And yeah, it was just the
older we get, we think we have to take life seriously.
But there's this thing called neotny. When yotany means the
older you get, the younger you become. I think you've got,
you know, the niotny gene in you Christian as Steph does,
and it's a it's a superpower if you don't take
your life and yourself too seriously.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yeah, we all know older relatives that actually grow. My
mother in law was someon of this. She grew young young.
As she got older, the su zestful life just got
greater and greater. It was incredible to see and be
around that energy source. She's running on a clean fuel
and I found her inspirational, whereas I know other family
members who didn't live like that, and they almost calcify absolutely.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
And we talk in the book about the Blue Zones. Yes,
these five areas around the world where people live. It's
the largest amount of centurions where people live over one
hundred years old. And then we trace the reason they're
living over one hundred years old and being in the
play state and laughing and hanging out with friends and
you know, relationships, experiences and memories and you know, farming
(25:48):
your own food and making your own None.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Of that is about a resume or a job title
or the corner office.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Correct, correct, Yeah, you realize at the end of the day,
when you readefine success less from achievement and more to fulfillment,
you realize the importance of these intrinsic motivations. That is
such for me. That's probably the second most favorite chapter
in the book is understanding the correlation between play, purpose,
and potential and using those three states to get into
(26:13):
the flow stage because they're main effectively the same thing.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Yeah, there's so much in your book. Honestly, I wholeheartedly
recommend people by it. I think when a lot of
people say they feel stuck. I get a lot of
emails from listeners, and a lot of them suddenly it's
like they arrive at some point in their life band
where they don't really know who they are, and then
they don't know what they should be doing and the
(26:36):
two beautiful questions, but they can feel quite intimidating. One
thing that's very clear in your book is I think
most of us, when we get into that position in life,
you're obsessed with knowing the right path forward. What's clear
reading the book repeatedly is actually is going back towards yourself,
and you go back to yourself and there's clues that
were there waiting for you to come back to.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Very much so. Yeah, and we like to redefine who
you are as a human being first rather than a
human doing. And I think it's chapter three of the
book where we teach people how to reframe who am
I and tap into their imperfections and their hobbies and
their passions and the things that make them smile and
the things that they're in love with as a kid, Right,
(27:19):
you find things that you love to do and play
around with, and little smells and jeans you love to wear.
You redefine who you are from that place. As you said,
it's got nothing to do with achievement or having to
do something. And rather than saying, I know I'll be
successful when right, and we put ourselves into that.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Futures deferring satisfaction, aren't you.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Yeah, I know I'll be successful when I get that promotion.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Earn it? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Is that when? Then syndrome? When I get there, then
I'll be happy, Which is a crazy way to live
our lives. It puts us into that gap mentality, and
the goalposts keep moving, so we'll never get there. Right,
will never be enough. But if you measure backwards, Christian,
if I gave you a sheet of paper and I said, right, oh,
write down all the little wins you've had when you
first started in radio, or when you first started as
(28:02):
a teenager to where you are now right sitting with
me today, And write down all the little wins that
you've had along the way. The little gains, a little
successes you've had from that moment to where you are now.
And you did this exercise, right, And I said, right,
I look at that sheet of paper, and you look
at this incredible journey that you've been on. And then
I say to you, how do you feel? Write down
the words the best descript how you feeling in this moment,
(28:25):
measuring their gains and measuring backwards rather than measuring forwards.
You'd say to me, you'd say, crowey, I feel grateful,
I probably feel successful, I feel happy, I feel confident,
And my favorite word at the moment is I feel content.
Now I'm not done yet, right, I've got all these
goals and dreams. But it means everything that Christian goes
(28:45):
after from this moment on is a want. It's not
a neat like if you need it for self validation,
that's emotional pressure. But if you want it but you
don't need it, you can be totally committed but fully detached.
And I think that's the opportunity for all of us
to read it. And the way to do that, by
the way, is rather than saying I know it would
be successful when you say to yourself, I know I'm
(29:06):
being successful when so if we workshop that, Christian O'Connor
might say, I know I'm being successful when I have
a belly laugh every day, when I genuinely care about
the audience, when we work as a team right to
help each other, when I get eight hours sleep, when
I see a beautiful sunrise, when I have a coffee
at my favorite barista. What you're doing is you're redefining
(29:29):
success for you and only you, so we become self determined.
I think today was so socially determined because we care
so much what others think about us. So true, right,
because we fear rejection of the tribe who have gone
so far that we stop. That's not our life task. No,
it's not your role in life to have to live
up to someone else's expectations, whether it's your parents, whether
(29:50):
it's the ratings, whether it's advertisers, whether it's your boss. Right,
but we think we do. That's not your role. You
don't have to validate yourself to anyone, prove yourself to anyone.
That's not your life tasks. What is your life task
is focusing on the things you can control and be
the best version of who you want to be. For you,
what your value you are, what your purpose is right,
what your goals and dreams are. Then we can stay
(30:12):
in our lane, right, and you can start with, well,
what are my taste buds?
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Like?
Speaker 3 (30:17):
What are my music tastes? What makes me laugh? What
makes me angry?
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Right?
Speaker 3 (30:20):
What makes me cry? You start to identify these things
you're studying to become self determined. You still care about others,
by the way, because we're a hard wire for connection,
but in terms of your authenticity and the courage to
be you, there's such a simpler way to live our
lives that removes all this emotional and economic and outcome
pressure that we're all getting distracted by.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
What is your goal and your dream?
Speaker 3 (30:42):
For your book, Oh well, I deliberately made chapter one
the Dreaded e Wort and to move from pressure to
freedom and around expectations, especially for teenagers. So getting back
to your question is because when you and I were
growing up, expectations used to mean something we can control
(31:02):
one hundred percent. Because I can want the sun to
come up tomorrow, but I can't control it right, so
I can't expect it. But today, in particular for teenagers,
expectations are now loosely being defined as something we can't
control but still want to control it, which is also
the definition of pressure. So today's definition of expectation is
also the definition of pressure. Which is why when you're
(31:24):
watching sport or the Olympics or reality TV shows, you'll
always hear those two words in the same sentence. So
whenever someone tells me they're feeling pressure, almost always is
they have an unhealthy or unrealistic relationship between what is
expected of them and what isn't expected of them. And
as I said earlier, believing you have to live up
to someone else's expectations is not a teenager's life task.
(31:47):
The expectations they put on themselves and what they want
to be for them that is their life task. So
if a teenager picks up the book and they don't read,
and they don't get past any of the chapters, that's
the one chapter that my goal and dream is that
teenagers reframe what is expected of them and therefore remove pressure.
So therefore they have the freedom to live a life
(32:09):
true to themselves and have the courage to be themselves.
So and getting that obviously into the university system, I
mean I spent a bit of time last year with
some NBA teams, and I was doing some work with
the San Antonio Spurs and they've got a joint venture
with the University of Texas, the health division, and I
spent a bit of time with the ut Health Division,
and I was just making conversation with him. I said, right,
(32:30):
what's going on in a university? And they said, Ben
And by the way, in context, I just spent three
days with the coaches talking to them about how to
remove pressure from their athletes and from themselves by reframing expectations.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Right.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
And then she said to me that she had been
the amount of kids in the US at the moment
are dropping out of colleges is at epidemic levels, and
it's costing universities billions of dollars, right, And I said,
what's the root cause? And she said pressure.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Whenever I hear that word, I get this radar. I
get obsessed by words. At the moment, pressure and expectations
is high on the agenda. And I said, emotional pressure
or outcome pressure and she said both, feeling I have
to live up to the expectations of my parents or society.
And what happens if I get a degree, and I'm
still don't get a job, right. But then she said
something that really really scared the hell out of me,
(33:19):
and I can't believe she said it second, not first.
She said, been the amount of kids in America that
are self harming at the moment in colleges is at
epidemic levels as well. And I said pressure, and she said, yes,
so because we think the goal is winning, you know,
we get the best scores, we get in the best universities,
we get the degrees and so forth, but we still
don't feel that we're enough. We still believe we have
to do something or live up to someone else's expectations.
(33:41):
And I don't want to hang around TI I'm sixty
five to feel that way. So they're checking out, and
it's just for me. It's just the greatest travel travesty
on the planet in terms of perspective of teenagers, because
when you and I were growing up, yes, extrinsic motivations
were dominant. Consumerism and returns like near the obsession that
it is today, especially with technology exacerbating this social comparison.
(34:04):
So what chances do they have, right if we don't
And schools aren't designed to help people become human beings right,
as we discussed, because of grading and so forth, becomes
achievement versus fulfillment. And if there's nowhere, there's no human
beings school where you can learn this, I'm kind of
hoping the book starts a conversation.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Why don't you set one up though a school?
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Yeah, well, my good friend LEYL. Stone has set up
a school as an experiment down in series and so forth,
starting to try these. My other good friend who's on
the front cover of this book, Andre Agacy. He spent
a lot of time. His shame story was all about
not feeling that he was smart enough right around education,
because he rebelled against education as a young boy. Once
he worked out his purpose in life had nothing to
(34:45):
do with playing tennis, but inspiring others to stay learning
in education, he set up one hundred and forty charter
schools across North America.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Dragsy story is beautiful. His book I recommend to so
many people. Open the first child. Does he hate you
playing tennis?
Speaker 3 (34:59):
That's the first what he gives the punchline away on
the very first page. I hate tennis totally, totally. It
was really important for me to have Andrea on the
front cover of the book, and he's never done it before.
He did it once with Phil Knight in the back
of his book Shoe Dog.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Which is a pretty good company then the same company
as Phil Night, Shoot Dog.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
It was more about what he said on the front
cover when he talks about you know what it means
to live a successful life and redefine success. Yes, and
I think he was the first athlete who for me,
truly embraced vulnerability, worked through his adversity and came out
the other sign and found purpose of meaning and redefine
success from that more purpose driven, potential driven and play driven.
(35:43):
And aster Parell the reason I was so excited to
have her on the front cover is she, for me,
is the first person who truly understood the correlation between
play and love. There's this school of thought and psychology
there's only two emotions, love and fear, and every other
emotion is a derivative of one of those two. Right,
So passionate, excitement, confident is love, anxiety, stress, worries, fear. Now, again,
(36:06):
it's above my pay grade to argue that point, but
it's the same with play and fear. Because I mentioned
the opposite of players at work, it's fear. So that
means the relationship between play and love is very, very similar.
Both of them are impossible to define. Neither of us
could define love for each other in a way that
we both agree with and same with play. Right, So
(36:26):
if that's the case, and for me this was a
revolution revelation in writing the book, I suddenly realized that, wow,
maybe love is the noun and plays the verb right.
Maybe love is the intention and plays the action, and maybe,
just maybe the Beatles were only half right. As human beings, yeah,
(36:49):
they're right, all we need is love, But as human doings,
all we need is play. So play mobilizes love. So
when you're laughing on air and your listeners are laughing
and you're in that play state, yes, we don't actually
do the correlation. It's actually an act of love. So
whether we're making jokes, make cakes, or making love, as
(37:10):
long as we're in the play state, right, our sense
of authenticity of humans is being realized. Now play could
be adaptation, right, and just zooming out to a bigger
picture and just observing that curiosity that you mentioned, so
understanding what it means for us, And as I mentioned,
in the book, no matter what happens, right for the
rest of your life, just keep playing, getting back to
the blue zones right. It will keep you out of
(37:31):
the fear state, and it'll just keep you younger.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
It's a great book. It's out today. I cannot recommend
it enough. I generally mean, I've read it twice. There's
so much in it. But both of my daughters are
reading the first chapter moment, the nineteen twenty one the
right University, and they are exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
There's huge pressure.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
I need to do this, I need to get these
grades or I'm somehow going to ruin the rest of
my life. And they're using the pea wood. When I
was nineteen, I didn't know about purpose. That was almost
like that word hadn't been invented. There was another thing.
It was a new thing that we've put on these kids.
Now you know where they need to work. It feels
like they've got have sorted out who they are and
the whole purpose in life by.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Ninety or twenty.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
There's too much no exactly when.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
You're still in some way freeguring out what you're doing
with you.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
I am, and that's why I say to people. I'm
fifty seven years old. I'm still trying to work out
what I want to do when I grow up. Right now,
for young kids coming through and your your kids, by
the way, the perfect demographic for me while this can well,
the book is more a psychographic than a demographic. Yeah,
I want to start with teenagers. My generations already screwed
it up, but we can we can learn a lot
along the way, right So, yeah, it's very much. They're
(38:36):
the kind of they're the audience that we really want
to understand a lot of these principles.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
So if there's a little mom and dad's listen to
list right now.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
I cannot recommend enough Bencrow, Where the Light Gets In
is a fantastic book. Honestly, there's so much in it.
You should be really proud. It's going to help so
many people. Ben well done, Thank you, Christian.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Yeah, as I said, it's a privilege of a lifetime
to do what I do and share these principles. And yeah,
I mean, the pandemic created an opportunity for me to
kind of codify with the mojo a and this gap,
second gap year I've had has created the opportunity to
write the book. And put the principles. Then I'm going
to go hide under it somewhere for a few years.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Oh good luck with it. I know it's going to
be a huge success or it already is. I got
so much from it. It's out today, whether light gets in.
It's by Ben Crow.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Ben. Thanks for chatting to us today.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
Pleasure Christian all the very best The Christian O'Connell Show
Podcast
I Heeart podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
You can hear more Gold one I four point three podcasts,
playlist and listen live on the free iHeart app. Got
anything Good?
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Hey, this is the Christian O'Connell Show podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
My special guest this morning is the world's most in
demand mindset coach. It is Ben Crow.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Ben. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Thank you, Christian, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yea, I know you're someone I've got to know the
last couple of years. If a lot of people don't
recognize the name, how would you describe what you do?
And I've read the book and I don't like titles,
and we'll get to that in a minute, But how
would you describe what is a mindset coach?
Speaker 3 (00:53):
I guess I try and help people with their mindset
on the field in a professional sense, to find confidence
in their skills with belief in a personal sense, to
believe in their potential and find that balance between I
guess confidence and happiness and achievement with fulfillment. We're so
distracted today as human beings, focusing on all these things
we can't control, wanting to control the create. It's emotional
(01:14):
pressure or outcome pressure, right, So I guess a mindset.
Coach helps identify where the distractions are coming and they're
different for all of us, right, and try and find
the freedom to compete, have fun and play and as
human beings. I guess that's what we should all be doing,
whether an athlete or a student.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
And how did you get into this line of work?
You know you're Australian. How did you even end up
in America working with mister Nike, Phil Knight, Shootdog?
Speaker 1 (01:37):
How did that happen?
Speaker 3 (01:40):
My dad passed away when I was sixteen, I reckon,
I've always had this curiosity to try and just make
sense of the world and find more meaning and perspective.
And then at Uni I studied anthropology and philosophy and English,
and at the time I was saying, when the hell
am I ever going to use these three disciplines. I
didn't realize at the time that philosophy is the study
of wisdom, anthropologies the study of humans and human behavior,
(02:02):
and English is kind of prioritize as storytelling. Then I
joined Nike, which is kind of a storytelling company. And
I noticed at Nike that there are all these athletes
that were so extrinsically motivated in terms of money, and
fame and status and recognition. They lost sight of why
they fell in love with the sport in the first place.
And a lot of our athletes went off the rails,
(02:23):
and some of them are more famous than others, you know,
Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong. And I noticed that athletes that
went the other way, that went internal, not external, and
Andre Agassi is a very good case study. Ashbadi is
a very good case study here in Australia. Albert to
separate what they did from who they were, like the
human doing from the human being, and their identity became
less about what they did and more about their intrinsic motivations,
(02:46):
and that just fascinated me. I suddenly realized there's no
such thing as a human being school where you can
kind of learn these principles, and that took me on
a very different journey from more internal storytelling. When I
came back to Australia, I just continued to mentor a
lot of athletes that I used to work with it
at Nike, and then that morphed into mentoring coaches and
then athletes teams, executive teams. During COVID, it kind of
(03:09):
just went crazy and I started morphed into hospitals and
universities and the World Health Organization. And yeah, I've kind
of been on a journey ever since then. And I
guess I've just had time during COVID to codify these
principles into a framework that created the Mojo app. And
then the last year I've had the time most of
my athletes retired, whether it's Danny Ricardo or Ashbardi, Dylan Orcott,
(03:30):
Steph Gilmore and gave me time to kind of okay,
if I'm ever going to write this book, And I
guess my work lends itself to long form storytelling, and
I thought this is the time to write the book.
You had something to do with it, Christian.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Oh ready, Sorry, it takes I've just finished writing my book.
It takes a lot to write a book. But the
great news is everything you want to do. It feels
like a conversation with you, Ben. It's a great book.
And I've read lots of different transformational books. What puts
your book about all of them is this isn't theory.
Every story, every perspective shift that you're harping us with
(04:05):
throughout the book has got real world examples that you've
been part of or if you've got a story about
and so it feels more real, it feels that it's
something like, oh I could do that, I understand that.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
And so it's crammed with stories.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Yeah, and that's deliberate because I think stories is how
we learn as humans, and we're living through an information
era with technology and reports and it is but stories,
which taps into our imagination, moves it from an intellectual
understanding to an emotional understanding. You know, we are the
stories we tell ourselves about others. But when we can
hear stories from others, especially imperfect stories of how people
(04:42):
overcame adversity and so forth. But getting back to the book,
I realized a long time ago that these principles are
two thousand years old, and if you study sociology, psychology, philosophy, anthropology, theology,
there's these kind of principles that exist across all of them.
And I think the one skill that I feel that
I have is kind of pattern recognition understanding. Okay, this
(05:06):
is appearing across all these different signs, all these different
ologies and isms. If there's a way that I can
simplify this kind of practical wisdom and remove the mystique
in a really simple and practical way. I think that
was the opportunity with these perspective shifts in the book.
And then I guess over the last twenty thirty years,
I've literally been working with athletes and teams using these
(05:26):
exact principles, right, and then more recently with you know,
hospitals and universities and schools. So it's exciting. While I
initially started with the lead athletes at Nike, to your
question that now it's kind of an opportunity for the
whole world to get access to some of these works.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, to me, it's grounded in the every day and
what's going is this post The whole book really is
you walking us through how to shift perspectives. And I
guess most of everything in our life is perspectives. And
when you think about it and you challenge your perspectives
and assumptions, invariably they're wrong. We we just don't got
the time. You're just overwhelmed getting through the day. You're
(06:00):
never ending to do list. The great thing about reading
your book is that actually invites you to slow down.
I found myself slowing down and actually I'm quite a
quick my age to.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Read this book.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
I've read it twice because you can see here there's
one there's so many notes in this The perspective shifts.
Is that what you think most of us need? That's
where we're struggling when we talking about being stuck in
our lives or at work or at home.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Is that what you think it is?
Speaker 3 (06:23):
I do very much. So Yeah. Perspective by definition means
the way you see something or your attitude towards something. Right,
So am I stuck at home? Am I safe at home?
Do I get to do this? Or I have to
got to do this? So our perspective literally guides our
entire life, So choosing it wisely is pretty important.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Right?
Speaker 3 (06:40):
But where do you go to learn these things? Whether
my perspective is right or wrong? And there's nothing more
exciting for me. And that's why I called the book
where the light gets in. When someone has this Eureka moment,
this aha moment where they realized where they were going
wrong in terms of their mindset and their perspective, and
they can reframe either their sense of self, a sense
of worth, their role as a leader, what they thought
(07:03):
was expected of them in life versus what isn't expected
of them, and while every chapter as a mindset to
shift and a problem to solve, they all share a
common theme, which is very much about learning to identify
and accept the things we can't control and focus the
limited time we have left on this planet on the
things we can control and the best version of ourselves.
(07:25):
Most of us don't know what the best version of
ourselves is. We're so focused on the human doing we
haven't really connected back with the human being. And the
book really shows you how to do that. So you
don't feel like you have to continue to achieve something
or do something in order to be someone. You can
be content. You're not done yet. You've got all these
goals and dreams you want to chase down, but your
self worth isn't determined on whether you get there or not.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
See that's a big thing though, because of social media.
I think it makes this well, because we're fed a
fake version of other people. You know, you watch a
video that's probably the twentieth version they've done off film
in that video, and you think that's their real life,
and so it creates this massive disconnection, so you feel
even more stuck in a way. So I'm never going
to get to that social media doesn't help.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Yeah, I think the biggest distraction I've noticed globally, and
social media is part of it. It's a focus on
extrinsic motivations for our self worth. Typically that's money, fame, status,
and recognition. And when we go external for our self worth,
we become externally socially determined, not self determined, but if
(08:32):
we can become intrinsically motivated right and focus on the
things we can control and the best version of ourselves.
But it happens way before media and social media and
consumerism and materialism. It actually starts back in the education
system Christian like in grade three in most countries around
the world, that's when grading gets introduced. And that's when
(08:53):
kids like a nine year old girl or boy shifts
their perspective from playing with numbers and playing with shapes
to extrinsically motivated because suddenly there's grades, and suddenly my
parents who are interested in my grades, and suddenly I'm
not in that class anymore. I'm in that class. A
nine year old boy or girl. They're too young because
from that moment on, they believe they have to do
(09:13):
something or achieve something in order to be someone, and
that continues through secondary school and then the workforce and
so forth. So the goal is to help I mean,
be fantastic in grade three. If kids could develop a
to be list rather than a to do list, I love.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
That in the book.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Tell us a bit more about that though, because we've
all got the to do list. But what's the ben
version of that, the to be list?
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Yeah, kind of identified it during the pandemic a lot,
I'd say to a lot of clients, Right, regardless of
you're whether you're religious or you're believe in God, it's
just a shame for the purpose the world's trying to
tell us something with his pandemic. I'd always ask them
the same question, what do you reckons? She's trying to say, right,
And that also the same thing in their own words,
they reckon the world's trying to tell us to stop
(09:56):
doing and obsessing doing and start being, you know, to
do less and to be more, be more connected to
myself or family or nature. And they said they wanted
to just stop saying busy when someone says, how are
you right? And so, because if you think about it, Christian,
if you feel like you have to do something or
achieve something, right with this is a radio show or whatever.
In order to be someone, you'll never be fulfilled, you'll
(10:19):
never be content, you'll never feel like you're enough, you'll
never have unconditional love because it's always conditional, not having
to do something or achieve something. So what we suggest
is like, rather than start the morning with a to
do list, is write your own to be list. Because
whatever words you write down next against your to be list.
Let's say Christian wants to be playful or grateful, right,
(10:41):
or kind or courageous? Right, it doesn't matter, it's your list,
But whatever words you write down next, you're in total
control of that human being. There's so many things in
your life you can't control, but the human that you
want to be is not one of them, and that
can become your definition of success. Right in whatever form
you show up in, either as a dad or as
a husband, or as a radio producer or as a leader,
(11:03):
if you are playful and grateful and kind and courageous,
that's been a successful day relative to the things you
can control.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, it's so inch because for a lot of us band,
who we are is largely situational, Like if things are
going well, the meeting's going well, but the moment you're
feeling being judged or you did something wrong, you made
a mistake, we kind of lose ourselves and you're stuck
in some story of without even realizing you're not there
in the room. Suddenly a fifteen year old version of
yourself turned up, you know, and you're incredibly reactive and
(11:32):
people don't know what to do around you and that
and it all happens so quickly.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yeah, and that's where self acceptance and self compassion come in.
So part of the first part of the journey is
really making sense of your story and working out who
you are and letting go of who you're not and
start to celebrate yourself and celebrate your imperfections and your quirks,
and bring self compassion along the ride too, so you
can be kinder and gentle to yourself. Right, you can
(11:56):
be totally committed but fully detached from the outcome. You're
not attention, you're not attaching your self worth to your
role or you know, we're achievements and things you're going
to do in your.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Love Tell them about this then.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
One of the most impactful chapters in your book for me,
and I've told the whole team to start in the
middle of your book is the one going from fear
to play. And I don't think it's just unique to me.
I think for a lot of us, whether you've got
pressure at home or whatever business you do, there's some
form of pressure in your life and our relationship to
pressure and fear. You do a great job in one chapter.
(12:29):
It really made me think about things differently over the
last couple of weeks. I'm very grateful that chapter. What
could you tell people listening right now about how you
reframe fear and pressure?
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Yeah, well, that was also my favorite chapter to write
as well, and I love what you said about you
don't need to pick up this book and read it sequentially.
You can look at the perspective shifts and you think instinctively,
you're going to know which one are really struggling with
right now. From a leader, it might be from Ida Weo,
the hero's journey, where you realize that life's not about
you but the impact you can have on someone else's life.
(13:01):
But the play chapter was so much fun for me
to write and research, and I learned so much when
I was writing that chapter as well, in particular the
relationship between play and love, which we'll get to. But
to answer your question, the opposite of play isn't work.
The opposite of play is fear. So, as humans we're
either in the playstate orin the fear state. We don't
(13:23):
call it fear. We typically call it pressure or stress
or sleep, deperation, and so forth. So the first thing
a lot of my clients say to themselves is am
I in the playstate? Or am I in the fear state?
And regardless of how they answer that question, they then
say to themselves, what does play look like for me? Here?
As humans, we're designed by nature to play, but we've
just lost that up on. We think play is table tennis, yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Or you think is something you did at school and
actually the work of being a grown up. It's very
serious with big consequences, though you must. If you're not
exhausted on the version of burnout or hustling, you're not
doing it right.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Totally, totally. So I say in the book that play
needs a rebrand. It does because it's fundamental to human existence.
You think about this radio show, you think about any
success you've had in your life. Everything you're doing is
play based, right, And the simplest way to get into
play is to smile and be curious. The curiosity keeps
(14:16):
you in the playstate. It takes agency back, and it
turns adversity into possibility. Okay, how do I get through this?
Who can help me? Where to from here? But there
are different forms of play. Curiosity play is the simplest one.
We can simply ask yourself what if? Right, Just start
a question with what if we did this? What if
you put a commander around Australia?
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Right?
Speaker 3 (14:36):
What if we know? You seriously start with what if
and understanding how powerful the what if question was? And
you read the chapter right, So we tell some beautiful stories.
When Nike signed Michael Jordan, all basketball shoes had to
be white, right, and if they had any color then
he'd be banned and they'd find five thousand dollars a game. Well,
a young designer in the meeting said, what if we
did it anyway? What if we put more black and
(14:58):
red in Michael Jordan's shoes, and what if we paid
the fines? And what if we made an ad about it?
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Right?
Speaker 3 (15:03):
And within three months it became the number one shoe
in the world. So simply asking what if is a
really powerful way to get into that the playstate.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Yeah, and letting that curiosity be the engine that drives
everything in your life.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
It's a better way to be in the world.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Yeah, Right Now, it were all very.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Fixed in our opinions, aren't we You're right, you think this,
you're wrong, and so we're really rigid and you get
trapped in that.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Absolutely, Yeah, And understanding our play history is one of
the most helpful ways to get into our natural playstate. Right. So,
when young Christian was growing up, he loved to do
different things, right. It might have been sport, it might
have been music, might have been comedy, he might have
been talking so forth. So you start to understand what
litch you up as a young boy, and typically you'll
get an understanding of the career you're doing right now
(15:43):
in radio is linked back to the various passions and
hobbies and curious things that young Christian had. But you
also had a natural playstate. And the way we do that,
as we explain in the book, is everyone's got an
early play memory. And early, by the way, can be
last week. It doesn't have to be when I was
ten years old. Yeah, you identify on early play memory
and it could be a photograph, right that you're looking
(16:04):
back on, and then you identify the words that best
represents how you were feeling in that memory. And having
done this thousands of times around the world, typically there's
five states that people identify in their own language. Obviously,
the first one is playful. The second one is feeling
free or carefree. Yeah, the next one is feeling kind
of excited or adventurous. The fourth one is feeling safe
(16:27):
or warm or a sense of belonging connected, and the
fifth one is loved. And a psychiatrist asked me when
I was giving a talk in London a few years ago, Ben,
why do these same five states keep appearing whenever someone
does his exercise? And I said, I don't know. It's
above my pay grade, but maybe, just maybe, as human beings,
(16:48):
that's who we are. Before we get pimples and we
think we've got to fit into a tribe or you know,
the fear of being rejected from the tribe, we were playful, carefree, excited, safe, warm,
belonged and loved. And if we can get back into
that natural play state, right, because it turns if we're
in the fear state, we're in that quartizole state. If
we're in the play state. It's curiosity, create, experimentation, serendipity. Right.
(17:11):
I feel like every time you and I catch up, Christian,
you are naturally in the playstate. It doesn't mean you
don't go into the fear state. Because we're all human, right,
We're all in perfect We'll have pressures and expectations that
we get distracted by, but for the most part, knowing
you've got the power to get yourself back into the playstate.
Whether you're playing a Grand Slam tennis final or you know,
a radio show going national, it's really really powerful if
(17:33):
you understand how to harness that as well.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Oh, it really helped me the last couple of weeks
thinking about launching the show nationally last week.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
It was a big difference.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
That Tell me about your work with Ash Barty, What
did that look like?
Speaker 1 (17:44):
What were the big shifts you could help her with?
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Yeah, so the first part, and Ash was probably the
most curious out that I've ever worked with, and also
the most stubborn and the most vulnerable.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Now, while they must all be, they must all the
outletes you've worked with, you know, he're all world class,
elite performers.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Surely they must.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Share some commonalities very much. So there must be stubborn,
very determined and probably quite hard on themselves as well.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Yeah, absolute, yeah. And there's a good stubborn and a
bad stubborn. There's a good stubborn who just want to
accept mediocrity and wants to get put themselves, and there's
a bad stubborn that doesn't want to lean in. And
you know, deep down she knows what she wants to do,
but she'll be stubborn towards it. But the first date
was Ash just getting to understand who she was, the
human being that was. She was so defined by a
ranking right unranked one hundred in the world or two
(18:29):
hundred in the world and so forth, and you know
that's a bit of a mind screw when you just
your whole identity is linked to a number and a
grading and so forth. So separating the person from the
persona is really important for Ash and identifying the beliefs
that are holding her back. And typically there's two core
beliefs Christians that hold not just athletes back, but teenagers back,
help all of us back. The first belief she had
(18:51):
to develop was to believe that she was worthy no
matter what, just as she is right, because then she
could trust whether she wins or loses a game of tennis,
or wins or losers in life, it's all good because
she's enough just as she is right now. She was
able to develop that quite easily just by remembering her
relationationship with her parents, who used to say to her
as a young girl, I love to what you play.
(19:14):
That was it. It was unconditional. It wasn't conditional whether she
won or lost. So reminding herself of those stories and
the connections that she has enabled her to have that
unconditional love. That's foundational for anyone, right because that thing
gives you the courage to live a life true to
you and to follow the second belief, which is to
believe in her potential and trust if she keeps chipping away,
(19:34):
things will turn out. I say to a lot of people,
for Ashbarty, winning Wimbledon wasn't success. Believing she was worthy
to win Wimbledon. That was her definition of success, and
that happened six months earlier at a cafe in Brisbane
called Moomos Right, So establishing the.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Beliefs where epiphanies happened over a.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Few beers and a few tears right. So once she
could develop belief in herself and learn self acceptance because
as you said, we're really hard on ourselves as human beings.
So she had to accept her imperfections, accept her body
image except where she is, except her you know, education,
So just accept everything about herself that she wasn't accepting.
(20:12):
And we're either accepting or with suffering. We don't again
call it suffering, right, So developing a self acceptance list
for Ash was groundbreaking and life changing for her because
it created a boundary to be kinder and gentler with
herself and not take herself or life so seriously. Then
she could develop confidence in her skills and learned to
(20:32):
accept the things she can't control, which is outcomes and
so forth, and focus on the things she can control. Intension, effort,
and mindset are typically the three things that in a
performance sense, we can control, and then develop a set
of words that reminds her of the best version of herself.
And for Ash then it was very much about treating
this life as a career as an adventure, right, and
(20:53):
then playing with it, and everywhere she went she was
trying to play and have fun, and she had practical
jokes with her team. You know, there's very famous. At Wimbledon,
she answered every question at press conference with a Disney
quote and see if the journalists would get you know,
and we gave her the quote before she walked into
the room. So she's just you know, she plays Where's
Wally at the Australian Open, you know, because their photos everywhere.
(21:16):
So just having fun with the journey for Ash was
really really important as well.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah, one of the most impactful stories for me was
the stories in the book about your work was Stephanie Gilmore.
And I knew who she was because you know, she's
won so many world titles, but the story about her
I wasn't familiar with the story of her being attacked.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Yeah, tell us about that. This is an incredible story and.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Just how how she used it for growth, which I'm
not sure I would have been able to do that
suffering something as horrific as that.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yeah, Steph was probably the first athlete that I worked
with back in twenty twelve, two thousand and thirteen, and
that kind of took me on this journey the first time.
I used a lot of these principles and yeah, Steph
reached out through her sponsors and her family and Yeah.
In twenty twelve, after winning her third world title, she
(22:09):
got attacked by a random drug addict just after Christmas
out of the front of her apartment, attacked her with
a hammer and broke her skull and broke her arm,
and she went off the tour obviously and lost her confidence,
but also lost her innocence and then had to find
a way back in. And so a lot of our sessions,
especially in twenty twelve and twenty thirteen, was just trying
(22:31):
to find meaning through this adversity, because you know, we
can't reframe history, but we can reframe our interpretation of
it and find a meaning and you know, find some
values or find out more about ourselves and so forth.
So she was so caught up in the persona of
who she was, Stephanie Gilmo, the surfer, but she wanted
to understand the person as well and be more purpose
driven and values based, still performance focused. So she went
(22:54):
on this incredible journey of self discovery and self reflection
and introspection and then went back on the tour and
then very quickly won another four five world titles and
now she's the greatest surfer of all time. But through
that process The reason your greatest growth comes from from
your darkest times, and Steph knows this very well, is
because it unlocks three things. It unlocks humility because it
(23:18):
just grounds you in the brutal facts of your reality.
You know, five seconds earlier, as she was a three
time world champion surfer and suddenly she's in hospital, right,
so you know, life is what happens while you're busy
making other plans. As Steph realized, once the humility grounds
you in the brutal facts of your reality and then
unlocks curiosity. Okay, what happens now? How am I going
(23:38):
to get through this? Do I want to keep surfing?
You do want to do something else? That curiosity that
we mentioned from the place though, but it also unlocks
your core values because Steph had to dive deep into
a deep source, deep energy source, to overcome this adversity
and find the courage to keep going. So for Steph,
was that was love, that was courage, and that was
(23:59):
play from memory were her three core values. That she
could ground herself with those values and say what does
love look like for me today? Or what does courage
look like for me today? And then armed with that
she can put herself back out into the world and
then again find her. She did a beautiful job of
finding her early play memories, which we talk about in
the book. In the book, when she was four years
old in the kitchen floor, her mum's pottering around the
(24:21):
kitchen and her dad's trying to teach her how to
play the ukulele, and then the words she came and
she goes back to that memory often is just to
remind herself to be playful and loved and carefree and
excited and so forth. So, yeah, she taps into the play.
The play stayed incredibly and there's a beautiful chapter in
the book about how she won her world title, turning
(24:42):
the whole thing into a game and having fun with
it and so forth. And yeah, it was just the
older we get, we think we have to take life seriously.
But there's this thing called neotny. When yotany means the
older you get, the younger you become. I think you've got,
you know, the niotny gene in you Christian as Steph does,
and it's a it's a superpower if you don't take
your life and yourself too seriously.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yeah, we all know older relatives that actually grow. My
mother in law was someon of this. She grew young young.
As she got older, the su zestful life just got
greater and greater. It was incredible to see and be
around that energy source. She's running on a clean fuel
and I found her inspirational, whereas I know other family
members who didn't live like that, and they almost calcify absolutely.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
And we talk in the book about the Blue Zones. Yes,
these five areas around the world where people live. It's
the largest amount of centurions where people live over one
hundred years old. And then we trace the reason they're
living over one hundred years old and being in the
play state and laughing and hanging out with friends and
you know, relationships, experiences and memories and you know, farming
(25:48):
your own food and making your own None.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Of that is about a resume or a job title
or the corner office.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Correct, correct, Yeah, you realize at the end of the day,
when you readefine success less from achievement and more to fulfillment,
you realize the importance of these intrinsic motivations. That is
such for me. That's probably the second most favorite chapter
in the book is understanding the correlation between play, purpose,
and potential and using those three states to get into
(26:13):
the flow stage because they're main effectively the same thing.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Yeah, there's so much in your book. Honestly, I wholeheartedly
recommend people by it. I think when a lot of
people say they feel stuck. I get a lot of
emails from listeners, and a lot of them suddenly it's
like they arrive at some point in their life band
where they don't really know who they are, and then
they don't know what they should be doing and the
(26:36):
two beautiful questions, but they can feel quite intimidating. One
thing that's very clear in your book is I think
most of us, when we get into that position in life,
you're obsessed with knowing the right path forward. What's clear
reading the book repeatedly is actually is going back towards yourself,
and you go back to yourself and there's clues that
were there waiting for you to come back to.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Very much so. Yeah, and we like to redefine who
you are as a human being first rather than a
human doing. And I think it's chapter three of the
book where we teach people how to reframe who am
I and tap into their imperfections and their hobbies and
their passions and the things that make them smile and
the things that they're in love with as a kid, Right,
(27:19):
you find things that you love to do and play
around with, and little smells and jeans you love to wear.
You redefine who you are from that place. As you said,
it's got nothing to do with achievement or having to
do something. And rather than saying, I know I'll be
successful when right, and we put ourselves into that.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Futures deferring satisfaction, aren't you.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Yeah, I know I'll be successful when I get that promotion.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Earn it? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Is that when? Then syndrome? When I get there, then
I'll be happy, Which is a crazy way to live
our lives. It puts us into that gap mentality, and
the goalposts keep moving, so we'll never get there. Right,
will never be enough. But if you measure backwards, Christian,
if I gave you a sheet of paper and I said, right, oh,
write down all the little wins you've had when you
first started in radio, or when you first started as
(28:02):
a teenager to where you are now right sitting with
me today, And write down all the little wins that
you've had along the way. The little gains, a little
successes you've had from that moment to where you are now.
And you did this exercise, right, And I said, right,
I look at that sheet of paper, and you look
at this incredible journey that you've been on. And then
I say to you, how do you feel? Write down
the words the best descript how you feeling in this moment,
(28:25):
measuring their gains and measuring backwards rather than measuring forwards.
You'd say to me, you'd say, crowey, I feel grateful,
I probably feel successful, I feel happy, I feel confident,
And my favorite word at the moment is I feel content.
Now I'm not done yet, right, I've got all these
goals and dreams. But it means everything that Christian goes
(28:45):
after from this moment on is a want. It's not
a neat like if you need it for self validation,
that's emotional pressure. But if you want it but you
don't need it, you can be totally committed but fully detached.
And I think that's the opportunity for all of us
to read it. And the way to do that, by
the way, is rather than saying I know it would
be successful when you say to yourself, I know I'm
(29:06):
being successful when so if we workshop that, Christian O'Connor
might say, I know I'm being successful when I have
a belly laugh every day, when I genuinely care about
the audience, when we work as a team right to
help each other, when I get eight hours sleep, when
I see a beautiful sunrise, when I have a coffee
at my favorite barista. What you're doing is you're redefining
(29:29):
success for you and only you, so we become self determined.
I think today was so socially determined because we care
so much what others think about us. So true, right,
because we fear rejection of the tribe who have gone
so far that we stop. That's not our life task. No,
it's not your role in life to have to live
up to someone else's expectations, whether it's your parents, whether
(29:50):
it's the ratings, whether it's advertisers, whether it's your boss. Right,
but we think we do. That's not your role. You
don't have to validate yourself to anyone, prove yourself to anyone.
That's not your life tasks. What is your life task
is focusing on the things you can control and be
the best version of who you want to be. For you,
what your value you are, what your purpose is right,
what your goals and dreams are. Then we can stay
(30:12):
in our lane, right, and you can start with, well,
what are my taste buds?
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Like?
Speaker 3 (30:17):
What are my music tastes? What makes me laugh? What
makes me angry?
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Right?
Speaker 3 (30:20):
What makes me cry? You start to identify these things
you're studying to become self determined. You still care about others,
by the way, because we're a hard wire for connection,
but in terms of your authenticity and the courage to
be you, there's such a simpler way to live our
lives that removes all this emotional and economic and outcome
pressure that we're all getting distracted by.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
What is your goal and your dream?
Speaker 3 (30:42):
For your book, Oh well, I deliberately made chapter one
the Dreaded e Wort and to move from pressure to
freedom and around expectations, especially for teenagers. So getting back
to your question is because when you and I were
growing up, expectations used to mean something we can control
(31:02):
one hundred percent. Because I can want the sun to
come up tomorrow, but I can't control it right, so
I can't expect it. But today, in particular for teenagers,
expectations are now loosely being defined as something we can't
control but still want to control it, which is also
the definition of pressure. So today's definition of expectation is
also the definition of pressure. Which is why when you're
(31:24):
watching sport or the Olympics or reality TV shows, you'll
always hear those two words in the same sentence. So
whenever someone tells me they're feeling pressure, almost always is
they have an unhealthy or unrealistic relationship between what is
expected of them and what isn't expected of them. And
as I said earlier, believing you have to live up
to someone else's expectations is not a teenager's life task.
(31:47):
The expectations they put on themselves and what they want
to be for them that is their life task. So
if a teenager picks up the book and they don't read,
and they don't get past any of the chapters, that's
the one chapter that my goal and dream is that
teenagers reframe what is expected of them and therefore remove pressure.
So therefore they have the freedom to live a life
(32:09):
true to themselves and have the courage to be themselves.
So and getting that obviously into the university system, I
mean I spent a bit of time last year with
some NBA teams, and I was doing some work with
the San Antonio Spurs and they've got a joint venture
with the University of Texas, the health division, and I
spent a bit of time with the ut Health Division,
and I was just making conversation with him. I said, right,
(32:30):
what's going on in a university? And they said, Ben
And by the way, in context, I just spent three
days with the coaches talking to them about how to
remove pressure from their athletes and from themselves by reframing expectations.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Right.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
And then she said to me that she had been
the amount of kids in the US at the moment
are dropping out of colleges is at epidemic levels, and
it's costing universities billions of dollars, right, And I said,
what's the root cause? And she said pressure.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Whenever I hear that word, I get this radar. I
get obsessed by words. At the moment, pressure and expectations
is high on the agenda. And I said, emotional pressure
or outcome pressure and she said both, feeling I have
to live up to the expectations of my parents or society.
And what happens if I get a degree, and I'm
still don't get a job, right. But then she said
something that really really scared the hell out of me,
(33:19):
and I can't believe she said it second, not first.
She said, been the amount of kids in America that
are self harming at the moment in colleges is at
epidemic levels as well. And I said pressure, and she said, yes,
so because we think the goal is winning, you know,
we get the best scores, we get in the best universities,
we get the degrees and so forth, but we still
don't feel that we're enough. We still believe we have
to do something or live up to someone else's expectations.
(33:41):
And I don't want to hang around TI I'm sixty
five to feel that way. So they're checking out, and
it's just for me. It's just the greatest travel travesty
on the planet in terms of perspective of teenagers, because
when you and I were growing up, yes, extrinsic motivations
were dominant. Consumerism and returns like near the obsession that
it is today, especially with technology exacerbating this social comparison.
(34:04):
So what chances do they have, right if we don't
And schools aren't designed to help people become human beings right,
as we discussed, because of grading and so forth, becomes
achievement versus fulfillment. And if there's nowhere, there's no human
beings school where you can learn this, I'm kind of
hoping the book starts a conversation.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Why don't you set one up though a school?
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Yeah, well, my good friend LEYL. Stone has set up
a school as an experiment down in series and so forth,
starting to try these. My other good friend who's on
the front cover of this book, Andre Agacy. He spent
a lot of time. His shame story was all about
not feeling that he was smart enough right around education,
because he rebelled against education as a young boy. Once
he worked out his purpose in life had nothing to
(34:45):
do with playing tennis, but inspiring others to stay learning
in education, he set up one hundred and forty charter
schools across North America.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Dragsy story is beautiful. His book I recommend to so
many people. Open the first child. Does he hate you
playing tennis?
Speaker 3 (34:59):
That's the first what he gives the punchline away on
the very first page. I hate tennis totally, totally. It
was really important for me to have Andrea on the
front cover of the book, and he's never done it before.
He did it once with Phil Knight in the back
of his book Shoe Dog.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Which is a pretty good company then the same company
as Phil Night, Shoot Dog.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
It was more about what he said on the front
cover when he talks about you know what it means
to live a successful life and redefine success. Yes, and
I think he was the first athlete who for me,
truly embraced vulnerability, worked through his adversity and came out
the other sign and found purpose of meaning and redefine
success from that more purpose driven, potential driven and play driven.
(35:43):
And aster Parell the reason I was so excited to
have her on the front cover is she, for me,
is the first person who truly understood the correlation between
play and love. There's this school of thought and psychology
there's only two emotions, love and fear, and every other
emotion is a derivative of one of those two. Right,
So passionate, excitement, confident is love, anxiety, stress, worries, fear. Now, again,
(36:06):
it's above my pay grade to argue that point, but
it's the same with play and fear. Because I mentioned
the opposite of players at work, it's fear. So that
means the relationship between play and love is very, very similar.
Both of them are impossible to define. Neither of us
could define love for each other in a way that
we both agree with and same with play. Right, So
(36:26):
if that's the case, and for me this was a
revolution revelation in writing the book, I suddenly realized that, wow,
maybe love is the noun and plays the verb right.
Maybe love is the intention and plays the action, and maybe,
just maybe the Beatles were only half right. As human beings, yeah,
(36:49):
they're right, all we need is love, But as human doings,
all we need is play. So play mobilizes love. So
when you're laughing on air and your listeners are laughing
and you're in that play state, yes, we don't actually
do the correlation. It's actually an act of love. So
whether we're making jokes, make cakes, or making love, as
(37:10):
long as we're in the play state, right, our sense
of authenticity of humans is being realized. Now play could
be adaptation, right, and just zooming out to a bigger
picture and just observing that curiosity that you mentioned, so
understanding what it means for us, And as I mentioned,
in the book, no matter what happens, right for the
rest of your life, just keep playing, getting back to
the blue zones right. It will keep you out of
(37:31):
the fear state, and it'll just keep you younger.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
It's a great book. It's out today. I cannot recommend
it enough. I generally mean, I've read it twice. There's
so much in it. But both of my daughters are
reading the first chapter moment, the nineteen twenty one the
right University, and they are exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
There's huge pressure.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
I need to do this, I need to get these
grades or I'm somehow going to ruin the rest of
my life. And they're using the pea wood. When I
was nineteen, I didn't know about purpose. That was almost
like that word hadn't been invented. There was another thing.
It was a new thing that we've put on these kids.
Now you know where they need to work. It feels
like they've got have sorted out who they are and
the whole purpose in life by.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Ninety or twenty.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
There's too much no exactly when.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
You're still in some way freeguring out what you're doing
with you.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
I am, and that's why I say to people. I'm
fifty seven years old. I'm still trying to work out
what I want to do when I grow up. Right now,
for young kids coming through and your your kids, by
the way, the perfect demographic for me while this can well,
the book is more a psychographic than a demographic. Yeah,
I want to start with teenagers. My generations already screwed
it up, but we can we can learn a lot
along the way, right So, yeah, it's very much. They're
(38:36):
the kind of they're the audience that we really want
to understand a lot of these principles.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
So if there's a little mom and dad's listen to
list right now.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
I cannot recommend enough Bencrow, Where the Light Gets In
is a fantastic book. Honestly, there's so much in it.
You should be really proud. It's going to help so
many people. Ben well done, Thank you, Christian.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Yeah, as I said, it's a privilege of a lifetime
to do what I do and share these principles. And yeah,
I mean, the pandemic created an opportunity for me to
kind of codify with the mojo a and this gap,
second gap year I've had has created the opportunity to
write the book. And put the principles. Then I'm going
to go hide under it somewhere for a few years.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Oh good luck with it. I know it's going to
be a huge success or it already is. I got
so much from it. It's out today, whether light gets in.
It's by Ben Crow.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Ben. Thanks for chatting to us today.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
Pleasure Christian all the very best The Christian O'Connell Show
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