March 17, 2025 • 47 mins
Conscious communication is the foundation of a fulfilling life, transforming our relationship with ourselves and everyone around us. Jim Fuller shares wisdom on living in the present moment, practicing self-acceptance, and understanding the ego.
• Accepting reality as it is frees up mental bandwidth for what we can actually influence
• Practicing non-attachment to outcomes allows us to enter flow state more readily
• Self-acceptance ("self-okayness") is the foundation for all personal development
• Our internal world determines how we experience external reality
• Practical affirmations work best during states of heightened dopamine
• Mindfulness meditation allows us to experience emotions without identifying with them
• A healthy ego can serve us rather than control us
• Communication quality directly correlates to relationship quality and life satisfaction
• Quality communication is about "sharing" not "telling"
To get Jim's free introduction to mindfulness meditation course, visit jemfuller.com, go to the courses tab, and enter "podcast" in the coupon code field during checkout.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to another episode of Playing Injured.
We have an award-winning authorof the book the Art of
Conscious Communication forThoughtful Men.
We have an executive coach, aTEDx speaker, a retreat
facilitator.
We have Mr Jim Fuller.
How are we doing?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Josh, we made it dude Three years down the track to
the day and we made it.
Thank you so much for having meon your show, man.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Yeah, me and Jim, we actually got in contact with
each other exactly three yearsago.
We were looking at old messagesand Jim reached out February
20th 2022.
Today we're recording thispodcast February 20th 2025.
2022.
(00:48):
Today we're recording thispodcast february 20th 2025.
And um, you know, I guess Iwant to take it here because I
think in life, we, um, we canget too ahead of ourselves or we
can always be thinking aboutthe past, right, and I feel like
this is an example of being umpresent with where you are today
.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yeah, yeah.
And one I appreciate youbecause I didn't get back to you
until three years later.
But two right is well, you knowhow can folks just appreciate
where they are today, notlooking too much in the past,
(01:28):
not looking too much ahead, butjust allowing life to just
unfold.
Right, obviously you haveintentions, obviously you have
goals, but taking the stress offand kind of detaching from
outcomes I can kind of get intothat.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I love this conversation and there's two
kind of I mean, there's manyanswers to this or many things
we could talk about, but there'stwo things that come to mind.
One is that when we can reallyjust stop arguing with reality
right, when we can just let goand stop fighting with reality
(02:09):
because it's a pointless fight,you are always going to lose.
Reality is always going to winonly 100 of the time, but
reality is going to win right.
So I know that you and I weremeant to connect today.
How do I know this?
Because reality told me.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Because here we are.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
We weren't meant to meet last year, because we
didn't.
We weren't meant to record thisnext year because we're here
now.
And it's the same withaccepting everything that is in
this moment.
Apparently it's supposed to bethis way.
Now.
(02:51):
That's not saying that we don'thope for a better future or we
don't hope to improve our livesor improve the lives of others
around us.
I'm not talking about thefuture.
We're talking about the presentmoment.
Right here, right now,Everything is exactly as it's
supposed to be Apparently thegood, the bad, the ugly, the
good, the bad, the ugly, thetough, the hard, the easy, the
wonderful, the unpleasant, allof it.
Apparently it's exactly the wayit's supposed to be because
(03:12):
reality told us that right.
And when we stop fighting withthat, it frees up so much of our
own personal bandwidth to focuson the things that we can
influence, Like the quality ofhow I'm going to be here with
you in this moment.
If I'm distracted, thinkingabout the past, or even
subconsciously still strugglingwith the past, which is creating
(03:33):
a whole bunch of static in myinternal world, then I'm less
present with you right now.
Or if I'm sitting here thinkingabout what do I want to get
from this podcast, or I want tosell something, or I want to
achieve something.
If I'm stuck out in the future,then I'm less present with you
here in this moment.
So the quality of me in thismoment is diminished, right, and
(03:54):
therefore, if I'm diminished interms of the quality of my
character and my presence inthis moment, then the quality of
what I'm doing ie being in aconversation with you, Josh the
quality of that is less, so thenthe quality of what I'm doing
is less so then my results areworse.
They're not as good, right.
So if you want great results,you want to get good at being
(04:16):
more present in this moment,right.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, 100%.
I think so much of us.
We look for the next promotion,the next house, the next spouse
I didn't mean to rhyme but thenext car, right, the next
accomplishment, the next goal.
And you know, even like youknow this year, obviously, you
(04:42):
know you start the year off.
You're like, ok, these are thegoals that I'm going to have and
I need them by this time and Ihave to have it.
Yeah, yeah, time passes andyeah, um being able to, um be
comfortable with that andunderstand that it's going to
unfold when, when it's timeright, yes, yes yes, it's a much
(05:07):
more um well, there's manythings.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
It's more relaxing way, it's way less stressful, so
much more relaxing way to gothrough life.
But also, what happens when youadopt that practice that you
just shared, when you, when you,as you get better at doing that
, you access flow state more.
You also access the divinetiming and I'm going to sound to
people who are not spiritualthis might sound a bit woo-woo,
(05:33):
but you are accessing the divinetiming of your connection.
To call it God, call it lifeforce, call it energy or
universe, call it whatever youwant, it's the same thing.
We're an intrinsically andinseparable part of the greater
system of the universe.
You and me, we're part of thesame thing.
We're connected to everything.
(05:53):
When we fight time and we tryand make things happen in a way
that is not meant to be, we'reexpending all this energy and
we're getting frustrated.
That is not meant to be.
We're expending all this energyand we're getting frustrated.
But when we drop in and connectto the greater system, we go
into flow state right and thingshappen in ways we couldn't even
imagine that they happen in,and quite often in more
(06:16):
beautiful and divine ways.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yeah, that's what I was going to say.
Yeah, it happens A lot of times.
Things unfold better than youever imagined.
Yeah yeah look back on it, yourealize that oh, I, oh.
That's why it didn't unfoldthat way, because this right and
so we have to remember that,even in the present moment of,
of just realizing that, um, ifwe allow, um, you know things to
(06:45):
unfold without us clinging andcontrolling and trying to make
it happen a lot, of times it'salways better than we ever
imagined.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah, and there's a beautiful nuance in this.
There's a beautiful thing aswell.
It is also true, like you saidbefore, it's good to have goals.
It gives you a sense of it,gives you some direction, it
gives you something to aim for,something to strive for.
It's good to have passion.
It's good to have goals.
It gives you a sense of it,gives you some direction.
It gives you something to aimfor, something to strive for.
It's good to have passion.
It's good to have hope.
I hope for a better future, youknow.
I hope I can provide a goodlife for my children.
(07:14):
I hope that you know, etc.
So it's good to have hope andaspiration and to practice
non-attachment to the outcome.
Yeah Right, so I have hopes,but no expectations.
I strive, but if it doesn't endup being what I was striving
for, that's completely beautiful, that's fine, that's okay.
(07:37):
You know, I'm engaged today.
I wake up in the morning and Ihave my morning routines around,
living my best life, and I goout and do what I can do to try
and be of service and make apositive difference, but the
actual outcome itself will bewhat it will be.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah, yeah, and being comfortable, and, like you said
, it's great to strive and goafter what you want.
It's just important to rememberto detach from it, because
better, right, yeah, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, to be better.
Uh, I'm thinking about anotherthing of acceptance is
self-acceptance, right,accepting ourselves as we are
(08:12):
100 I wish I was smarter.
Wish I was taller.
Wish I looked better.
Wish I was scared.
Wish I was more ripped, morejacked wish I had more.
You know, we kind of thinkingabout ourselves, right, we don't
accept ourselves as we are.
Yeah, compare, look atdifferent folks.
(08:33):
Yeah yeah what's your thoughtson that?
How can folks get a little bitmore?
Speaker 2 (08:40):
you know, if someone said to me what's the most
important thing for me to workon, they said jim, I'm reading
all of these self developmentbooks.
I'm reading all of these booksaround making my best life.
And where should I start?
Like, if I could just pick onething to work on, what should it
be?
I would say thatSelf-acceptance.
(09:01):
I call it self-okayness.
It's not like I'm the best andit's not like I'm terrible.
It's just like I'm exactly whoI'm supposed to be in this
moment, right now.
And again, I'm not talkingabout the future version of me.
Hopefully I learn and growwiser and get better at some
things, you know.
So I'm not talking about thefuture version of me.
(09:22):
I'm talking about me in thismoment, right here, right now.
I am exactly enough to be me.
I shouldn't be more like anyoneelse because I'm not.
I shouldn't be taller becauseI'm not, you know.
I shouldn't be skinnier becauseI'm not.
Apparently, I should be exactlythe way I am right now, with
all my stuff and a practice, andI'll share with your listeners
(09:46):
in a sec how we can actuallyimplement this in a practical
way.
But the practice ofself-acceptance, self-love,
self-okayness is ultimatelyimportant because your
relationship with self comesbefore your relationship with
the whole rest of life.
And if your relationship withyourself isn't great, your
relationship with life isn'tgreat, because you can only
(10:08):
experience life in your mind, inyour body, in your soul,
through your relationship withyourself, which is your internal
world.
Right, I'll just?
I'll just riff on this a littlebit more.
So, all information that isaround you, that tells you that
you are in a system, thatthere's an environment around
you, everything you can see,everything you can touch,
(10:29):
everything you can smell or hearor feel or whatever, all of
that information is coming toyou in bits of information, data
, light through your eyes, soundwaves to your ears, physical
sensations through your nerveendings right, it's all coming
to you in data, and we receivethese bits of information
through our filtering system,through our biases and our
(10:50):
beliefs and our hangups and ourkind of meta framework of
reality inside our mind.
And then in our mind, werepresent that information in
this beautiful, seemingly veryreal holographic projection or
hallucination in our mind, right?
So everything you see aroundyou, you're seeing it in your
(11:12):
mind, and the quality of yourmind determines the quality of
your version of reality, right?
So if you are having a terribleday.
Maybe you just got some reallyterrible news on the telephone,
or you're having a reallyterrible day if your internal
world is in a in a storm andit's tumultuous and it's dark
(11:36):
and gray and there's strongwinds blowing and and rain and
hail coming down on you in yourmind.
When you walk outside, you walkdown the street and that's the
world you see.
You know you bump into things,you bang your knee, you slam
your fingers in the car door,you meet people who are
aggressive and hard, and that'syour experience of the outside
(11:57):
world.
This is because of the qualityof your mind.
But you could walk out into thevery same day and you've just
had a beautiful phone call fromsomeone that you love who rang
you up with somethingwonderful's just happened to
them, and you're on top of theworld.
You walk out into the same dayand it's a completely different
day for you.
(12:18):
It's all to do with the qualityof your mind.
So this circles back to yourpoint.
When we do the work onself-acceptance, which is
acceptance of our past,acceptance of our relationship
with ourself, then we canactually curate a more beautiful
internal world, which means ourexperience of the external
(12:40):
world becomes more beautifulright.
So yeah, dude, I could notagree with you more.
I think it's the place to start.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yeah, and then you know, I know you talked about
practical things, right, whatare some that folks can do?
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, for sure, man.
So, practical right, when Ifirst heard about affirmations
long time ago and I was, I usedto be a bit of a hippie, with
dreadlocks and no shoes and Iwas wandering around the world
lots of time in india and placeslike that, meditating and just
you know, in in some way I waskind of avoiding, avoiding the
(13:14):
real world, quote unquote Ididn't want to go get a job and
do whatever I was doing, man, Iwanted to wander around the
world and smoke weed and try andmeditate, you know, and so I
was doing that for years.
And so back then, even backthen, I was kind of, you know, I
I thought that affirmations andmantra, I thought it was just
(13:35):
some woo, woo kind of thing.
I didn't understand the sciencebehind it, I didn't understand
how affirmations could work.
Now, having turned my wholelife around and part of turning
my life around when I had mymidlife crisis which for me was
a midlife awakening wasunderstanding the limiting
belief I had.
I had a belief that I wasn'tgood enough.
(13:56):
And to change that belief, allthese books started coming to me
.
I read Joe Dispenza's bookEvolve the Brain, and then a
whole bunch of other booksaround neuroplasticity and how
the neurons fire together for usto say a particular thing.
When we put something on highrepeat, like saying the same
sentence over and over again,every time you say that sentence
(14:18):
, the corresponding neurons inyour brain have to fire in that
particular sequence for you tosay that sentence, right?
So when you do it on high,repeat with consistency, over
time the neurons form like alittle neural highway, right?
They fire together more andmore easily until they become
like a reflex thought.
They fire off their own accord.
(14:40):
This is a belief.
So you can literally brainwashyourself not to believe anything
.
I mean, you can't brainwashyourself that you can fly.
Obviously there's certainnatural laws of the universe,
like gravity.
But you can certainly brainwashyourself to believe that you
are good enough.
You can certainly brainwashyourself to believe that I do
deserve love.
(15:01):
You can brainwash yourself tobelieve that you know, I accept
who I am, I am who I'm supposedto be and I'm good enough just
the way I am.
And how do you do that?
You wake up every morning whenyou're, you know, in the
bathroom getting ready for yourday and you say it out loud over
and over again.
And if I can just add, josh, anextra little tip.
(15:22):
I heard on this from um throughthe huberman lab podcast.
I don't know if you've everlistened to the huberman lab
podcast yeah yeah, anyway.
So, um, he was.
He was explaining that whenyour brain is in a heightened
state of dopamine, theneuroplasticity is accelerated,
(15:43):
so these neurons kind of makeassociations with each other
thousands of times faster.
And then I was reading aboutthe listening to and reading
about the benefits of cold waterimmersion.
Now I don't have an ice bath atmy house, but at the end of my
hot shower I do 60 seconds offull blast cold right, and when
(16:04):
you get out of the cold it'slike when you get out of the ice
bath, you feel amazing.
You're like you yeah I'm ready,let's go right, because the
dopamine's high and you'refeeling good.
When you're in that state,that's when I run my
affirmations because the neuronswire together heaps faster.
So I do it.
(16:24):
When I'm in that state, I've mycold.
60 seconds of cold get out.
I'm doing my affirmations whenI'm getting ready for work.
Now I'm getting dressed andready for the day and that's
when I'm doing my affirmations.
So that's a practical,practical tip.
Another time when your dopamineis high is in the expectation of
the reward.
So our dopamine levels go upwhen we are, when we think we're
(16:45):
about to get the reward.
So if you're on a sunday, yougo to your favorite ice cream
shop and you're going to getyour ice cream.
On the way to the shop, thedopamine's going up because
you're like, oh, I'm going toget my ice cream.
When you actually get the icecream and you start eating it,
the dopamine dives straight away.
It's like oh right, I've had myice cream, what's next?
What can I have now?
(17:06):
Right, I bought the house.
What can I buy now?
Speaker 1 (17:13):
so, yeah, right, yeah , I man, I.
Um, I just had a anotherpodcast, uh, with a lady who was
talking about self-talk.
She wrote a book aboutself-talk and how it is right.
Yes, talk to yourself.
Yes, it's something that I'veheard for most of my life, and
(17:37):
it's so easy to do, but it'salso so easy not to do, right?
Yeah, wake up in the morningand affirm yourself.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Talk to yourself yeah , yeah, pay attention, man.
Yeah, pay attention to thequality of the words that you
use, because we, when you're notaware of it, when, if you're,
if you have never paid attentionto the way you speak to
yourself, especially when you'renot feeling good about yourself
, it's abusive.
Man, we wouldn't talk like thisto anyone else.
You know you wouldn't talk likethis to your kids or to your
(18:08):
family or your friends, you know.
You know when you feel likeyou've failed or you've fallen
short or you dropped the ball oryou didn't do as well, you know
, listen to the quality of thewords you're using, because we
cuss at ourselves horribly right.
That's not healthy.
That's like this woman wouldhave shared with you.
(18:28):
You're creating a relationshipwith yourself that is abusive,
you know.
And then we wonder why webecome addicted to drugs or you
know, or other things, or drinkor whatever it is, or why we
don't look after ourselvesbecause the relationship isn't
healthy.
So it's a really importantpoint that you bring up, man.
We need to be more aware of thechoice of language.
Now, you can still holdyourself to account.
(18:50):
You can still aspire If Iaspire to be a certain character
, level of character, my corevalues, and if I drop the ball
and you know, maybe I'll lose mytemper at one of my boys, right
, and then afterwards I'm like,no, jim, that's not good enough.
Man, you can do better thanthat, right?
(19:11):
Come on, man, I believe in you.
You're a good man.
Now.
You dropped the ball, you lostyour temper at your son, but go
and apologize to him and tellhim that you want to be a better
dad, right?
So this is me coaching myselfin a positive way, rather than
the old way which would havebeen.
I don't know man, can I swearon your podcast?
Are we allowed to swear?
Yeah, so old way, old way wouldhave been oh, you, fucking
(19:35):
dickhead, what are you doing?
You're such a loser man.
What the fuck, dude?
You're an idiot, you're stupid.
Yeah, this is how we talk toourselves, man.
That's that's.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
That's not good, that's not healthy, you know
yeah, and you know we do it soregularly.
Right, it's so normal that,yeah, you know at first, when
you first start doingaffirmations, it can kind of
feel a little bit weird to talkyeah you're in a positive way.
But, yeah, um, over time, likeyou said, your, your mind,
(20:06):
starts to change and youroutlook of the world around you
just so differently.
And, yeah, you know, you talkabout consciousness and I'm, and
and that's something that Iwant to talk to you about is
like consciousness, theconsciousness of your thoughts,
and the nature of our thoughtsand how, um, we aren't our
(20:29):
thoughts.
It's something that I've beenpracticing more and more is,
when I get a thought, being ableto analyze the thought almost
from, like a third party view.
Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, I'munderstanding more and more that
, hey, my thoughts are kind offrom old programming.
It's going through past trauma,is going through past
(20:50):
experiences and, like you said,it will distort reality and
apply to you and then you'llstart to see certain situations
that aren't reality uh, yeah,yeah, it's so true.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
It's so true, and you know that that that third party
perspective you were talkingabout, the more I've been
practicing mindfulness,meditation, which is the
practice of um, being asconsciousness and just noticing
all the different things thatshow up in our conscious
awareness and the more I've beenpracticing that, the more I've
(21:29):
been experiencing that thatthird party isn't really a third
party.
It's the very, very firstfundamental party.
It's the underlying awarenessthat is always there, that we
can tap into, and it's shared.
Consciousness is shared.
This is you and I tap intoconsciousness.
(21:50):
We're tapping into the samething, you know.
So it's a space that connects uswith well, with everything you
know, with all life, and we getto experience a unique
expression of consciousnessthrough being a unique being
(22:12):
like you're you, and there's noone exactly the same as you, no
one or me.
So we get to experience theexpression of consciousness in a
unique way, which is beautiful.
And also, when we drop downinto that perspective you were
talking about, then we, then wecan experience being as
consciousness and just noticingwhat arises.
(22:33):
It's pretty trippy, hey, yeahyeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
yeah, it is, it is.
Do you feel like meditation hashelped you with that, though?
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Massively, massively, yeah.
Meditation, mindfulnessmeditation I've been practicing
now consistently now for over 12years and it's like a
superpower, dude.
You know, one of the superpowerbenefits that comes from a
long-term practice of meditationis that you can become more and
(23:02):
more the driver of your own bus.
You know, whereas in the pastyou're a passenger on your bus.
You're walking down the streetand someone disrespects you and
shouts at you and you gettriggered and then all of a
sudden you're in a really badmood for the rest of the day and
you don't even know how toshake.
Sudden, you're in a really badmood for the rest of the day and
you don't even know how toshake it.
You're like, man, I can't shakethis mood.
(23:23):
You know I need to go and punchsomething, or I need to go and
drink something or I need to go.
I can't shake this mood.
Man, that person was so rude tome and we hold on to it.
It's like, wow, you'resuffering, being in a really
unpleasant state of beingbecause of what someone else
said, right?
But the more we practicemindfulness meditation, which is
the practice of going to theplace as consciousness and
(23:46):
simply observing what happens,is that, from that place of
observation, the physiologicalstate that we're in, the
emotions, say that we were in,that we identify with.
We don't say I'm experiencinganger right now.
We say I am angry, we identifywith it.
That's who I am right now, I'mangry, right.
And when we identify withsomething, we're holding onto it
(24:07):
, our ego is holding onto that.
It's our sense of identity,right?
But as we practice going to aplace of observation, everything
passes.
This too shall pass, and itactually passes really quickly.
And what I've noticed over theyears, the better we get at it
if something triggers me and Iexperience anger, and then I go
into a meditation state andnotice it, the anger dissipates
(24:30):
within seconds and I'm notpushing it down and sweeping it
under the rug and letting itstore up like unresolved anger.
No, no, no, I'm processing itreally quickly and then it's
actually gone and I'm back to myplace of equilibrium.
So this is a superpower.
Because just say, for example,you get asked to do a keynote
(24:52):
talk and you're sitting therebefore you have to go up on the
stage in front of a few hundredpeople and you're feeling
nervous, anxiety, adrenalinepumping, but you don't want to,
but you want to be able todeliver your talk in a calm way
so people can understand you.
The ability to be the driver ofyour bus, go into a little
meditation.
No one even knows you're doingit, you're just sitting there
(25:14):
and you're going into ameditation and the nerves settle
and you walk up on stage andyou present.
You know that's a bit of asuperpower, right?
Or or just say you you've hadan argument with your partner
and you've got to go and talkwith her, but you're you're
feeling like frustrated andyou're emotional, but you really
want to be calm and clear foryour woman or man or whoever,
(25:35):
the ability to be able to bringyourself back to your centre and
then go into the conversationthis is.
I reckon that's cool.
I reckon that's really cool,it's so cool, it's so cool.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
And when people start to realise that, like you said,
you know, I've heard the phraseright, you know you are not
your thoughts, but when you putit that way, it makes me
understand it know even more ofyou know, saying I experience,
I'm experiencing anxiety, yeah,oh, I'm anxious, I'm angry, yeah
you know, yeah, this is whatyou're experiencing, but it's,
(26:10):
that's right I'm not identifyingwith it yes, that's it, man.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Because when we identify as that thought or as
that emotion, our ego, which isour sense of identity, our ego,
grabs onto it.
And for the ego, that's theonly way it can know that it's
real by grabbing onto thisidentification with things that
are transitory.
(26:35):
So the ego is always a bitdefensive and a bit desperate
dude.
That's the.
That's the reason that let'stake the us, for example but it
happens in lots of places butthe us at the moment, with the
recent election, it's the reasonthat friends are not friends
anymore because they voted fordifferent parties.
And it's like, hang on a second, but you guys were friends and
they're going yeah, but youvoted for that and you voted for
(26:56):
that.
So they're identifying.
They're not saying I voted forrepublicans or I voted for
democrats.
They're going I am a republicanor I am a democrat.
It's like, hang on, when youwere born, you weren't any of
that.
You were just a soul in ababy's body going wow, lights
and sounds and toys and stuff.
(27:19):
You weren't born as a Democrat.
That's just what happenedthrough your life.
That's not who you are, but weidentify it.
It's like someone who'spro-choice or pro-life.
They say I'm a pro-choicerthat's who I am by identity,
right, or pro-vax, anti-vax.
I had friends here in Australia,family members, who said you
(27:42):
are not a part of this familyanymore and you are not welcome
here.
I'm like, oh my Lord, you, justyou, just what do you call it
when you cut?
You just cut someone out, youjust cut your daughter out of
your family, out of your lifebecause she didn't want to get
vaccinated.
But the reason they've donethat is because their ego
(28:03):
identified with I'm a pro-vaxxer, so and our ego gets super,
super defensive.
And for the ego it's it's lifeand death, it's war man.
We're going to go to war overthis.
And it's like, wow, can weremember that we're spiritual
beings, all connected and weactually um can come, come back
into a place of love andunderstanding with each?
Speaker 1 (28:20):
other.
You know, yeah, that's I mean.
What you just said is huge.
You know the ego, right, andthe ego wants the labels.
The ego is the one that wantsthe labels right, the house to
identify with, the car toidentify with right.
Talk about that.
(28:42):
What's the role of the ego?
How can folks get a betterunderstanding of?
Is this my?
That's why I think meditationis so huge and quiet time is so
huge.
Is because a moment to reallythink about like wait, do I
actually want that?
or yeah, my ego that wants that,to get the validation and to
have that label, you know, butis that actually me?
(29:04):
Is that truly what I value?
Right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Yeah.
What's your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2 (29:13):
So, look, we need to have an ego, apparently, because
we've got one.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
We're supposed to have one, right, because there
it is.
And you know, and apparentlythe ego evolved with us as a
species.
You know, as we evolved as aspecies, we developed this sense
of separation, this sense ofidentity, and our ego really is
quite simply our sense ofidentity.
It's who we think we are,separate from the outside world,
(29:41):
and it developed as aprotection mechanism to keep us
safe.
Right, there's a lion runningat me right now, and I'm not the
lion, we're not all one, it'snot kumbaya.
It's like no, no, no, thelion's going to eat me and I got
to save myself.
So I have this sense of me,protect myself, right.
And then we understood eachother in relationship to each
(30:01):
other.
So you and I, if we were partof the same tribe, and then I
have this experience, and then Ilook at you and I'm like, did
you have that experience?
So we look at each other and wesee each other and we connect
in relationship, and thenlanguage forms and we start to
be able to talk, right, and sowe're working together.
But I know you're you and I'mme, and I notice our differences
.
You know you're taller than meor something, or you're a bit
(30:23):
faster than me or whatever.
We notice the differencesbecause the ego is trying to
understand itself.
So the ego looks around andgoes well, I know what I'm not,
I know what I am.
And it's trying to understanditself as a separate entity.
But the ego is an illusion,right, we're not born with one.
Brand new babies don't have anego.
They're just all spirit.
(30:45):
They're just coming out,looking around and it's just.
They're connected to everythingaround them, right.
But the ego forms when we'relittle and we start to think
that we're separate.
So it's there to protect us.
It's very defensive.
It's fueled by fear right,because it's a protection
mechanism.
So it gets its petrol, it getsits juice from fear, whereas the
(31:07):
spirit gets its fuel from love.
Right.
The ego says we're separate.
Our spirit says no man, we'reone, we're connected.
Right.
The ego judges, has to judgeeveryone, judging around,
judging people positively andnegatively, but it's all about
itself.
The ego notices difference.
You look different to me.
(31:28):
Now I'm going to judge youbecause you look different to me
and it's fearful of differenceand many other things.
The ego wants to look good.
Hates looking stupid.
The ego wants to look good.
Hates looking stupid.
The ego wants to get even.
You know, you got me, I'm goingto get you back.
Ego, that's all ego.
Right, the ego needs to beright, right.
(31:50):
Someone says something thatdoesn't even matter, yeah.
Someone says, oh, at the superbowl there was like how many
people go to the super bowl?
How many people roughly were atthe super bowl, do you know?
Speaker 1 (32:02):
uh, it has to be in the six figures maybe right.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
So someone says, someone says there was 112 000
people at the super bowl andsomeone else goes no, it wasn't,
it was 118.
And they go no, it was 112.
They go it's 118.
And they start fighting overit's like, guys, it actually
doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter, but to theiregos it does, because their ego
needs to be right.
Or how's this dude, you go to adinner party, right, and you're
(32:29):
sitting there and your friendsare there and they're a couple,
and you're sitting around thedinner party and you're talking
about vacations, right?
And he says, oh, yeah, we went.
Yeah, we went to Costa Rica in2012.
And he wants to tell a storyabout Costa Rica and she says,
no, honey, it wasn't 2012.
That was 2013.
And he goes no, I'm pretty sureit was 2012.
And she goes no, it was 2013.
(32:51):
And they start fighting aboutthe year.
And everyone else at the tableis going tell about costa rica.
Guys, we don't mind which yearit was in, right, that's just
your ego needs to be right.
So as we start to get moreawareness of our ego, we can
notice it and, like yousuggested before, it's a really,
(33:11):
really powerful habit to form.
To pause, right.
So someone says something.
You're about to react.
Just pause, take a breath, usethat awareness, check in with
what you're about to say.
Check in, oh, ego, you werejust about to try and prove that
we're right.
And is that serving the greatergood?
Does it actually matter, or canwe just let that go?
(33:35):
You know, have that littlemoment to check in and is this
the, the values that I aspire tobe right now?
And check in with your corevalues and go.
Actually, no, I don't want tofight over what year we went to
costa rica.
I'm just gonna say yeah, yep,yep, and tell the story about
costa rica.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
You know, yeah, so are you saying that it's we need
to have a a healthyrelationship with the ego, right
?
You know?
You hear, yes, the, the phraselike ego death, right, kill the
ego, right?
No, but like you said, hey, we,because the ego has um in our
(34:09):
lives, it's been some benefit,right, yeah?
Speaker 2 (34:14):
ego right, it's lots of.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
It's helped us, you know, achieve.
It's helped us, you know, evenyou know our friends and maybe
getting the spouse that you have, like you know, your ego
allowed you to go and get thingsin life right.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
And kept you safe as well, and kept you safe as well,
and you can have a healthysense of identity, you can have
a healthy ego, and so, yeah, Idon't think we should try and
kill the ego or get rid of theego.
I think we should be curating ahealthy ego which you can do.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Yeah, what's healthy and healthy ego.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Well, if my sense of identity is that I'm a kind,
caring, generous, loving,open-minded, action taking man
who's on a mission to helpamplify positive ripples into
waves of good contribution,that's a sense of identity
that's healthy.
Yeah, my sense of who am I kind, caring, caring.
(35:16):
This is what I aspire to beright, kind, caring, generous,
open-minded, loving,action-taking, compassionate.
This is a sense of identity.
This is who I think I am, andit's healthy, it's good for me
and it's good for those aroundme, you know.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Yeah, yeah, I love that.
I love the fact, as you said,you know, the ego is driven by
fear.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah, we'll be okay yeah, I do, I have that
conversation.
I do man like when I, becausemy ego is still as as noisy as
everyone's right yeah I'm justmore aware of when it's my ego,
because I've been practicing itfor a long time.
And I'm walking down the streetand I hear my ego.
Or I'm driving in my car andyou know, and there's a slip
(36:04):
lane coming in and we're mergingand I leave a spot and and
someone cuts in front of me andthey don't say thank you or
anything, they just kind of cutin or maybe they even do the
bird out the window or somethingright, and my ego goes you know
, fucking rude person orwhatever it says, judging them,
gone, like.
And I hear it and I go hey, ego, bless your cotton socks.
(36:27):
I know you're trying to keep ussafe, right, but there's no
lion coming to eat us right now.
We're fine.
That driver's an upset person,that's their story.
That's okay, right?
So I have this littleconversation with my ego and
when you call your ego out, itkind of goes, yeah, but it kind
of just goes.
(36:48):
It's like busted, you, bustedme, all right.
It's like, for me my ego islike a 13-year-old boy, right,
who knows everything and istrying to get his own way.
And then, when you call it outwith love, right, and my spirit
comes in and says hey, I see you, darling, it's all right, you
know.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
And the 13-year-old boy goes oh bastard.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
And then also too, when you do that you're able to
kind of reframe things.
Yeah, completely reframe things, Reframe things.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
You can change your perspective on things Completely
.
Usually it's out of love, hey.
It's out of love.
Yeah, that person's in a rush.
We have no idea what's going on.
That person has just cut youoff.
Hey, nothing is wrong with them.
Maybe they're in a rush, wedon't know right, yeah, it comes
out of love.
Once you reframe it, it feelslike.
(37:40):
It seems like, like you said,the spirit, what feeds the
spirit, is love.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Yes, yes.
And when you reframe it likethat and you change to coming
into that place of coming from aplace of love, that is way
healthier.
You're living a much healthierlife now.
You're spending way less timebeing angry and stressed and
driven by fear.
You're spending way more timefeeling that you're coming from
a place of love and you're aquantumist and the
(38:08):
parasympathetic nervous systemis activated and it's just
healthier, you, you, you stayhealthier, you live longer,
you're happier, yourrelationships are better, your
work is better, everything getsbetter, you know 100.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
So I want to wrap it around, because we talk about
communication, right right, andyou talk about conscious
communication.
We just talked about all thethings that we need to be
conscious of thought, ego, right, and we talk about
communication and you kind ofjust open the door up to it.
It's like, you know, notallowing our ego to get in the
(38:44):
way of you know, when we'releading teams, when we're
leading people, communicationwith a friend, communication
with a spouse, communicationwith a stranger, communication
with your kids, siblings,whatever the case may be.
Yeah, where did all of thiskind of get created?
Conscious communication, why isit important?
We'd love for you to walk usthrough it.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
Yeah, it's fundamental, isn't it?
I mean you just mentioned it Inevery aspect of our life.
Our ability to communicateunderpins our ability to be
effective.
In every aspect of our life, Imean, whether it's just taking
something from an idea andmanifesting it into reality.
If you can't communicate youridea, you know, if einstein
(39:28):
couldn't communicate the theoryof relativity, all of his genius
understandings of the universewouldn't have meant anything to
anyone.
Right?
When you're in relationshipwith your spouse, if things are
not going well, it's becauseyou're not communicating well
with each other.
You both love each other.
You're just missing each otherin the communication piece,
right in, in work, in, in sport,in, in everything that we do.
(39:55):
Communication underpins ourability to be effective in
relationship and the quality ofour relationships is directly
correlated to the quality of ourlife.
Not the hat, not how big yourhouse is or how many cars you
had or what.
None of that constituteshappiness.
It's the quality of yourrelationships and that is the
quality of your communication.
(40:16):
Right, and man?
I've been watching.
You know like I wrote the bookin the first year of COVID and I
was watching man.
I was locked up at home andhere in Victoria in Australia,
we had the longest, strictestlockdowns in the world.
Anyone who thinks they gotlocked down, pretty bad.
You weren't living where Ilived, man.
(40:37):
We got locked down for twoyears, dude.
Anyway, I had time to write abook and I was noticing that the
communication is deteriorating.
The quality of ourcommunication is deteriorating
and people are shouting at eachother with the caps lock on, you
know, especially in the digitalworld and cancelling each other
and going after each other withvitriol online, and the
(41:01):
algorithms love it because it'sattention bait.
It's keeping us glued to thesescreens.
Bait, right, it's keeping usglued to these screens so the
algorithms keep putting more ofit in front of us because,
because the business model ofmeta is to just have us have us
glued to the screen as long aspossible, right?
So there's this kind of trainwreck and watching this
communication deteriorate.
(41:22):
I'm like, wow, we need some helpwith this.
We need to bring our attentionback to communication, and
communication comes from theLatin noun communicatio, which
means a sharing, not a telling,a sharing, and it comes from the
verb communicare, which meansto make common, the word common,
community, communication,commune, and I thought we need
(41:47):
to bring our attention back tothat.
So I started writing the bookand then I got a book writing
mentor and she said, jem, youneed to pick a niche, because
it's a great book but it's toobroad, so you need to pick
someone to write for.
She said, I think men could dowith this book.
I think men really could dowith some help with this, you
know, because we don't raise ourboys to communicate, we raise
our boys to be good at sport orto win.
(42:07):
And so I wrote the book for menand, funnily enough, man, it's
mainly women that buy the book,and I get emails from women
saying, hey, thanks for yourbook, it's awesome.
Now I've got to try and get myhusband to read it.
But the book got picked up byMango Publishing in Florida.
Thank you, shout out to Mangoand my agent, um, scott Scott
(42:31):
Miller, um, who's the MillerGray agency over in the states.
They picked me up, they theybelieved in this random Aussie
guy and said yeah, yeah, we'vegot your back.
Come on, let's get this bookout.
So it's been republished secondedition, with all of the
American spelling and everythinglike that, and, um, and it's
available, man, and there's theplug.
Yeah, I can tell my agent, Iplugged the book.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
But, hey, I wanted you to because, first of all,
communication is so importantand being able to communicate I
couldn't tell you how being ableto effectively communicate
helps your confidence to be ableto just share and communicate
and also to add value and alsoto get value added to you and
(43:16):
hear folks stories.
You know, I was just in Mexicoand I don't speak Spanish very
well and I couldn't tell you howmuch it was a wake up call for
me that I couldn't communicatethe way I wanted to and how it
made me feel right, made me feellike an outsider to something.
Right, that I couldn't reallyhear the stories of all these
(43:40):
amazing people that I waswalking past.
Right, maybe I could have a,you know, hola como estas, but I
couldn't really go deep, right,yeah, yeah, deep conversation
it is.
I don't know what brainchemicals fire off when you have
a deep conversation and youbuild connection and community,
(44:03):
but it's so important and, likeyou said, a lot of folks, you
know they're online, right, it'snot necessarily in person that
you hear people shouting at eachother and counseling each other
.
That's right, yeah, right, mostof the time, yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
Online or in their car because they're in a closed
steel box?
Yeah, online because they'resitting in their lounge, because
they're in a closed steel box.
Online because they're sittingin their lounge room right, but
in person, you're right, man,it's like it's different.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
Yeah, 100%.
So I think it's huge and I lovethe work that you're doing.
Jim, where can folks find you?
And I forgot to even mention tomy audience that you are in
australia.
Um, yeah, so hopefully theythey realize that as they heard
the podcast.
But, um, where can folks findyou?
Where can folks follow yourjourney, get in touch with you?
(44:57):
What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (44:58):
yeah, yeah, well, I mean, best place to start is the
website jemfullercom.
On there, man, man, you can getaccess to all my resources and
you can contact me.
I'm still really accessible andalso I'd love to give a gift to
your audience, man, if theywould like.
Yes, I have a course on therewhich is an introduction to
(45:21):
mindfulness meditation course.
You just go to my website andfollow the tab to courses.
When you get to the checkoutpage, rather than paying for it
in the coupon code box, just putthe word podcast into into
there and it'll make it free andyou can download it.
Keep it forever.
It's a super easy, simpleintroduction to mindfulness
meditation.
Um, yeah, so you can geteverything there.
(45:43):
You can follow me on insta jamfuller.
On insta I post content.
I try and help people there aswell, and we run high ticket
retreats in the himalaya inindia.
Um, I'm actually going to bestateside in a couple of weeks,
man.
I'm speaking at a conference insanta barbara with a friend of
mine, and then I'm hanging outwith some friends in san fran,
(46:03):
and then I've got an in-personevent down in san diego.
So, um, I'm gonna be.
Yeah, at least on the samecontinent as you in a few weeks
bro and and you'll be in abeautiful place um chicago.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
The midwest is uh.
I don't think you would want tobe here right now, not until
may or june anyway.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
So yeah, yeah, I'll come.
I'll come visit you um in yoursummer.
I'll come visit you.
It might not be for three years, but it'll happen I love it.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
So, yes, um the mindfulness made easy.
Right, we go to your website,um go to the courses and um hit
pat pot podcast.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
Okay, all right, sounds great.
Well, jim, we appreciate youadding value to us.
It was a lot that folks canlisten to.
They might need to listen tothis a few times, but some very
great ways to be more consciousand to kind of live life so that
(47:11):
you are in more of a flow state, and so I appreciate you.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Yeah, I appreciate you too, brother.
Thanks for having me on yourshow, thank you.
Welcome to another episode of Playing Injured.
We have an award-winning authorof the book the Art of
Conscious Communication forThoughtful Men.
We have an executive coach, aTEDx speaker, a retreat
facilitator.
We have Mr Jim Fuller.
How are we doing?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Josh, we made it dude Three years down the track to
the day and we made it.
Thank you so much for having meon your show, man.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Yeah, me and Jim, we actually got in contact with
each other exactly three yearsago.
We were looking at old messagesand Jim reached out February
20th 2022.
Today we're recording thispodcast February 20th 2025.
2022.
(00:48):
Today we're recording thispodcast february 20th 2025.
And um, you know, I guess Iwant to take it here because I
think in life, we, um, we canget too ahead of ourselves or we
can always be thinking aboutthe past, right, and I feel like
this is an example of being umpresent with where you are today
.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yeah, yeah.
And one I appreciate youbecause I didn't get back to you
until three years later.
But two right is well, you knowhow can folks just appreciate
where they are today, notlooking too much in the past,
(01:28):
not looking too much ahead, butjust allowing life to just
unfold.
Right, obviously you haveintentions, obviously you have
goals, but taking the stress offand kind of detaching from
outcomes I can kind of get intothat.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I love this conversation and there's two
kind of I mean, there's manyanswers to this or many things
we could talk about, but there'stwo things that come to mind.
One is that when we can reallyjust stop arguing with reality
right, when we can just let goand stop fighting with reality
(02:09):
because it's a pointless fight,you are always going to lose.
Reality is always going to winonly 100 of the time, but
reality is going to win right.
So I know that you and I weremeant to connect today.
How do I know this?
Because reality told me.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Because here we are.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
We weren't meant to meet last year, because we
didn't.
We weren't meant to record thisnext year because we're here
now.
And it's the same withaccepting everything that is in
this moment.
Apparently it's supposed to bethis way.
Now.
(02:51):
That's not saying that we don'thope for a better future or we
don't hope to improve our livesor improve the lives of others
around us.
I'm not talking about thefuture.
We're talking about the presentmoment.
Right here, right now,Everything is exactly as it's
supposed to be Apparently thegood, the bad, the ugly, the
good, the bad, the ugly, thetough, the hard, the easy, the
wonderful, the unpleasant, allof it.
Apparently it's exactly the wayit's supposed to be because
(03:12):
reality told us that right.
And when we stop fighting withthat, it frees up so much of our
own personal bandwidth to focuson the things that we can
influence, Like the quality ofhow I'm going to be here with
you in this moment.
If I'm distracted, thinkingabout the past, or even
subconsciously still strugglingwith the past, which is creating
(03:33):
a whole bunch of static in myinternal world, then I'm less
present with you right now.
Or if I'm sitting here thinkingabout what do I want to get
from this podcast, or I want tosell something, or I want to
achieve something.
If I'm stuck out in the future,then I'm less present with you
here in this moment.
So the quality of me in thismoment is diminished, right, and
(03:54):
therefore, if I'm diminished interms of the quality of my
character and my presence inthis moment, then the quality of
what I'm doing ie being in aconversation with you, Josh the
quality of that is less, so thenthe quality of what I'm doing
is less so then my results areworse.
They're not as good, right.
So if you want great results,you want to get good at being
(04:16):
more present in this moment,right.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, 100%.
I think so much of us.
We look for the next promotion,the next house, the next spouse
I didn't mean to rhyme but thenext car, right, the next
accomplishment, the next goal.
And you know, even like youknow this year, obviously, you
(04:42):
know you start the year off.
You're like, ok, these are thegoals that I'm going to have and
I need them by this time and Ihave to have it.
Yeah, yeah, time passes andyeah, um being able to, um be
comfortable with that andunderstand that it's going to
unfold when, when it's timeright, yes, yes yes, it's a much
(05:07):
more um well, there's manythings.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
It's more relaxing way, it's way less stressful, so
much more relaxing way to gothrough life.
But also, what happens when youadopt that practice that you
just shared, when you, when you,as you get better at doing that
, you access flow state more.
You also access the divinetiming and I'm going to sound to
people who are not spiritualthis might sound a bit woo-woo,
(05:33):
but you are accessing the divinetiming of your connection.
To call it God, call it lifeforce, call it energy or
universe, call it whatever youwant, it's the same thing.
We're an intrinsically andinseparable part of the greater
system of the universe.
You and me, we're part of thesame thing.
We're connected to everything.
(05:53):
When we fight time and we tryand make things happen in a way
that is not meant to be, we'reexpending all this energy and
we're getting frustrated.
That is not meant to be.
We're expending all this energyand we're getting frustrated.
But when we drop in and connectto the greater system, we go
into flow state right and thingshappen in ways we couldn't even
imagine that they happen in,and quite often in more
(06:16):
beautiful and divine ways.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yeah, that's what I was going to say.
Yeah, it happens A lot of times.
Things unfold better than youever imagined.
Yeah yeah look back on it, yourealize that oh, I, oh.
That's why it didn't unfoldthat way, because this right and
so we have to remember that,even in the present moment of,
of just realizing that, um, ifwe allow, um, you know things to
(06:45):
unfold without us clinging andcontrolling and trying to make
it happen a lot, of times it'salways better than we ever
imagined.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah, and there's a beautiful nuance in this.
There's a beautiful thing aswell.
It is also true, like you saidbefore, it's good to have goals.
It gives you a sense of it,gives you some direction, it
gives you something to aim for,something to strive for.
It's good to have passion.
It's good to have goals.
It gives you a sense of it,gives you some direction.
It gives you something to aimfor, something to strive for.
It's good to have passion.
It's good to have hope.
I hope for a better future, youknow.
I hope I can provide a goodlife for my children.
(07:14):
I hope that you know, etc.
So it's good to have hope andaspiration and to practice
non-attachment to the outcome.
Yeah Right, so I have hopes,but no expectations.
I strive, but if it doesn't endup being what I was striving
for, that's completely beautiful, that's fine, that's okay.
(07:37):
You know, I'm engaged today.
I wake up in the morning and Ihave my morning routines around,
living my best life, and I goout and do what I can do to try
and be of service and make apositive difference, but the
actual outcome itself will bewhat it will be.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah, yeah, and being comfortable, and, like you said
, it's great to strive and goafter what you want.
It's just important to rememberto detach from it, because
better, right, yeah, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, to be better.
Uh, I'm thinking about anotherthing of acceptance is
self-acceptance, right,accepting ourselves as we are
(08:12):
100 I wish I was smarter.
Wish I was taller.
Wish I looked better.
Wish I was scared.
Wish I was more ripped, morejacked wish I had more.
You know, we kind of thinkingabout ourselves, right, we don't
accept ourselves as we are.
Yeah, compare, look atdifferent folks.
(08:33):
Yeah yeah what's your thoughtson that?
How can folks get a little bitmore?
Speaker 2 (08:40):
you know, if someone said to me what's the most
important thing for me to workon, they said jim, I'm reading
all of these self developmentbooks.
I'm reading all of these booksaround making my best life.
And where should I start?
Like, if I could just pick onething to work on, what should it
be?
I would say thatSelf-acceptance.
(09:01):
I call it self-okayness.
It's not like I'm the best andit's not like I'm terrible.
It's just like I'm exactly whoI'm supposed to be in this
moment, right now.
And again, I'm not talkingabout the future version of me.
Hopefully I learn and growwiser and get better at some
things, you know.
So I'm not talking about thefuture version of me.
(09:22):
I'm talking about me in thismoment, right here, right now.
I am exactly enough to be me.
I shouldn't be more like anyoneelse because I'm not.
I shouldn't be taller becauseI'm not, you know.
I shouldn't be skinnier becauseI'm not.
Apparently, I should be exactlythe way I am right now, with
all my stuff and a practice, andI'll share with your listeners
(09:46):
in a sec how we can actuallyimplement this in a practical
way.
But the practice ofself-acceptance, self-love,
self-okayness is ultimatelyimportant because your
relationship with self comesbefore your relationship with
the whole rest of life.
And if your relationship withyourself isn't great, your
relationship with life isn'tgreat, because you can only
(10:08):
experience life in your mind, inyour body, in your soul,
through your relationship withyourself, which is your internal
world.
Right, I'll just?
I'll just riff on this a littlebit more.
So, all information that isaround you, that tells you that
you are in a system, thatthere's an environment around
you, everything you can see,everything you can touch,
(10:29):
everything you can smell or hearor feel or whatever, all of
that information is coming toyou in bits of information, data
, light through your eyes, soundwaves to your ears, physical
sensations through your nerveendings right, it's all coming
to you in data, and we receivethese bits of information
through our filtering system,through our biases and our
(10:50):
beliefs and our hangups and ourkind of meta framework of
reality inside our mind.
And then in our mind, werepresent that information in
this beautiful, seemingly veryreal holographic projection or
hallucination in our mind, right?
So everything you see aroundyou, you're seeing it in your
(11:12):
mind, and the quality of yourmind determines the quality of
your version of reality, right?
So if you are having a terribleday.
Maybe you just got some reallyterrible news on the telephone,
or you're having a reallyterrible day if your internal
world is in a in a storm andit's tumultuous and it's dark
(11:36):
and gray and there's strongwinds blowing and and rain and
hail coming down on you in yourmind.
When you walk outside, you walkdown the street and that's the
world you see.
You know you bump into things,you bang your knee, you slam
your fingers in the car door,you meet people who are
aggressive and hard, and that'syour experience of the outside
(11:57):
world.
This is because of the qualityof your mind.
But you could walk out into thevery same day and you've just
had a beautiful phone call fromsomeone that you love who rang
you up with somethingwonderful's just happened to
them, and you're on top of theworld.
You walk out into the same dayand it's a completely different
day for you.
(12:18):
It's all to do with the qualityof your mind.
So this circles back to yourpoint.
When we do the work onself-acceptance, which is
acceptance of our past,acceptance of our relationship
with ourself, then we canactually curate a more beautiful
internal world, which means ourexperience of the external
(12:40):
world becomes more beautifulright.
So yeah, dude, I could notagree with you more.
I think it's the place to start.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yeah, and then you know, I know you talked about
practical things, right, whatare some that folks can do?
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, for sure, man.
So, practical right, when Ifirst heard about affirmations
long time ago and I was, I usedto be a bit of a hippie, with
dreadlocks and no shoes and Iwas wandering around the world
lots of time in india and placeslike that, meditating and just
you know, in in some way I waskind of avoiding, avoiding the
(13:14):
real world, quote unquote Ididn't want to go get a job and
do whatever I was doing, man, Iwanted to wander around the
world and smoke weed and try andmeditate, you know, and so I
was doing that for years.
And so back then, even backthen, I was kind of, you know, I
I thought that affirmations andmantra, I thought it was just
(13:35):
some woo, woo kind of thing.
I didn't understand the sciencebehind it, I didn't understand
how affirmations could work.
Now, having turned my wholelife around and part of turning
my life around when I had mymidlife crisis which for me was
a midlife awakening wasunderstanding the limiting
belief I had.
I had a belief that I wasn'tgood enough.
(13:56):
And to change that belief, allthese books started coming to me
.
I read Joe Dispenza's bookEvolve the Brain, and then a
whole bunch of other booksaround neuroplasticity and how
the neurons fire together for usto say a particular thing.
When we put something on highrepeat, like saying the same
sentence over and over again,every time you say that sentence
(14:18):
, the corresponding neurons inyour brain have to fire in that
particular sequence for you tosay that sentence, right?
So when you do it on high,repeat with consistency, over
time the neurons form like alittle neural highway, right?
They fire together more andmore easily until they become
like a reflex thought.
They fire off their own accord.
(14:40):
This is a belief.
So you can literally brainwashyourself not to believe anything
.
I mean, you can't brainwashyourself that you can fly.
Obviously there's certainnatural laws of the universe,
like gravity.
But you can certainly brainwashyourself to believe that you
are good enough.
You can certainly brainwashyourself to believe that I do
deserve love.
(15:01):
You can brainwash yourself tobelieve that you know, I accept
who I am, I am who I'm supposedto be and I'm good enough just
the way I am.
And how do you do that?
You wake up every morning whenyou're, you know, in the
bathroom getting ready for yourday and you say it out loud over
and over again.
And if I can just add, josh, anextra little tip.
(15:22):
I heard on this from um throughthe huberman lab podcast.
I don't know if you've everlistened to the huberman lab
podcast yeah yeah, anyway.
So, um, he was.
He was explaining that whenyour brain is in a heightened
state of dopamine, theneuroplasticity is accelerated,
(15:43):
so these neurons kind of makeassociations with each other
thousands of times faster.
And then I was reading aboutthe listening to and reading
about the benefits of cold waterimmersion.
Now I don't have an ice bath atmy house, but at the end of my
hot shower I do 60 seconds offull blast cold right, and when
(16:04):
you get out of the cold it'slike when you get out of the ice
bath, you feel amazing.
You're like you yeah I'm ready,let's go right, because the
dopamine's high and you'refeeling good.
When you're in that state,that's when I run my
affirmations because the neuronswire together heaps faster.
So I do it.
(16:24):
When I'm in that state, I've mycold.
60 seconds of cold get out.
I'm doing my affirmations whenI'm getting ready for work.
Now I'm getting dressed andready for the day and that's
when I'm doing my affirmations.
So that's a practical,practical tip.
Another time when your dopamineis high is in the expectation of
the reward.
So our dopamine levels go upwhen we are, when we think we're
(16:45):
about to get the reward.
So if you're on a sunday, yougo to your favorite ice cream
shop and you're going to getyour ice cream.
On the way to the shop, thedopamine's going up because
you're like, oh, I'm going toget my ice cream.
When you actually get the icecream and you start eating it,
the dopamine dives straight away.
It's like oh right, I've had myice cream, what's next?
What can I have now?
(17:06):
Right, I bought the house.
What can I buy now?
Speaker 1 (17:13):
so, yeah, right, yeah , I man, I.
Um, I just had a anotherpodcast, uh, with a lady who was
talking about self-talk.
She wrote a book aboutself-talk and how it is right.
Yes, talk to yourself.
Yes, it's something that I'veheard for most of my life, and
(17:37):
it's so easy to do, but it'salso so easy not to do, right?
Yeah, wake up in the morningand affirm yourself.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Talk to yourself yeah , yeah, pay attention, man.
Yeah, pay attention to thequality of the words that you
use, because we, when you're notaware of it, when, if you're,
if you have never paid attentionto the way you speak to
yourself, especially when you'renot feeling good about yourself
, it's abusive.
Man, we wouldn't talk like thisto anyone else.
You know you wouldn't talk likethis to your kids or to your
(18:08):
family or your friends, you know.
You know when you feel likeyou've failed or you've fallen
short or you dropped the ball oryou didn't do as well, you know
, listen to the quality of thewords you're using, because we
cuss at ourselves horribly right.
That's not healthy.
That's like this woman wouldhave shared with you.
(18:28):
You're creating a relationshipwith yourself that is abusive,
you know.
And then we wonder why webecome addicted to drugs or you
know, or other things, or drinkor whatever it is, or why we
don't look after ourselvesbecause the relationship isn't
healthy.
So it's a really importantpoint that you bring up, man.
We need to be more aware of thechoice of language.
Now, you can still holdyourself to account.
(18:50):
You can still aspire If Iaspire to be a certain character
, level of character, my corevalues, and if I drop the ball
and you know, maybe I'll lose mytemper at one of my boys, right
, and then afterwards I'm like,no, jim, that's not good enough.
Man, you can do better thanthat, right?
(19:11):
Come on, man, I believe in you.
You're a good man.
Now.
You dropped the ball, you lostyour temper at your son, but go
and apologize to him and tellhim that you want to be a better
dad, right?
So this is me coaching myselfin a positive way, rather than
the old way which would havebeen.
I don't know man, can I swearon your podcast?
Are we allowed to swear?
Yeah, so old way, old way wouldhave been oh, you, fucking
(19:35):
dickhead, what are you doing?
You're such a loser man.
What the fuck, dude?
You're an idiot, you're stupid.
Yeah, this is how we talk toourselves, man.
That's that's.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
That's not good, that's not healthy, you know
yeah, and you know we do it soregularly.
Right, it's so normal that,yeah, you know at first, when
you first start doingaffirmations, it can kind of
feel a little bit weird to talkyeah you're in a positive way.
But, yeah, um, over time, likeyou said, your, your mind,
(20:06):
starts to change and youroutlook of the world around you
just so differently.
And, yeah, you know, you talkabout consciousness and I'm, and
and that's something that Iwant to talk to you about is
like consciousness, theconsciousness of your thoughts,
and the nature of our thoughtsand how, um, we aren't our
(20:29):
thoughts.
It's something that I've beenpracticing more and more is,
when I get a thought, being ableto analyze the thought almost
from, like a third party view.
Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, I'munderstanding more and more that
, hey, my thoughts are kind offrom old programming.
It's going through past trauma,is going through past
(20:50):
experiences and, like you said,it will distort reality and
apply to you and then you'llstart to see certain situations
that aren't reality uh, yeah,yeah, it's so true.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
It's so true, and you know that that that third party
perspective you were talkingabout, the more I've been
practicing mindfulness,meditation, which is the
practice of um, being asconsciousness and just noticing
all the different things thatshow up in our conscious
awareness and the more I've beenpracticing that, the more I've
(21:29):
been experiencing that thatthird party isn't really a third
party.
It's the very, very firstfundamental party.
It's the underlying awarenessthat is always there, that we
can tap into, and it's shared.
Consciousness is shared.
This is you and I tap intoconsciousness.
(21:50):
We're tapping into the samething, you know.
So it's a space that connects uswith well, with everything you
know, with all life, and we getto experience a unique
expression of consciousnessthrough being a unique being
(22:12):
like you're you, and there's noone exactly the same as you, no
one or me.
So we get to experience theexpression of consciousness in a
unique way, which is beautiful.
And also, when we drop downinto that perspective you were
talking about, then we, then wecan experience being as
consciousness and just noticingwhat arises.
(22:33):
It's pretty trippy, hey, yeahyeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
yeah, it is, it is.
Do you feel like meditation hashelped you with that, though?
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Massively, massively, yeah.
Meditation, mindfulnessmeditation I've been practicing
now consistently now for over 12years and it's like a
superpower, dude.
You know, one of the superpowerbenefits that comes from a
long-term practice of meditationis that you can become more and
(23:02):
more the driver of your own bus.
You know, whereas in the pastyou're a passenger on your bus.
You're walking down the streetand someone disrespects you and
shouts at you and you gettriggered and then all of a
sudden you're in a really badmood for the rest of the day and
you don't even know how toshake.
Sudden, you're in a really badmood for the rest of the day and
you don't even know how toshake it.
You're like, man, I can't shakethis mood.
(23:23):
You know I need to go and punchsomething, or I need to go and
drink something or I need to go.
I can't shake this mood.
Man, that person was so rude tome and we hold on to it.
It's like, wow, you'resuffering, being in a really
unpleasant state of beingbecause of what someone else
said, right?
But the more we practicemindfulness meditation, which is
the practice of going to theplace as consciousness and
(23:46):
simply observing what happens,is that, from that place of
observation, the physiologicalstate that we're in, the
emotions, say that we were in,that we identify with.
We don't say I'm experiencinganger right now.
We say I am angry, we identifywith it.
That's who I am right now, I'mangry, right.
And when we identify withsomething, we're holding onto it
(24:07):
, our ego is holding onto that.
It's our sense of identity,right?
But as we practice going to aplace of observation, everything
passes.
This too shall pass, and itactually passes really quickly.
And what I've noticed over theyears, the better we get at it
if something triggers me and Iexperience anger, and then I go
into a meditation state andnotice it, the anger dissipates
(24:30):
within seconds and I'm notpushing it down and sweeping it
under the rug and letting itstore up like unresolved anger.
No, no, no, I'm processing itreally quickly and then it's
actually gone and I'm back to myplace of equilibrium.
So this is a superpower.
Because just say, for example,you get asked to do a keynote
(24:52):
talk and you're sitting therebefore you have to go up on the
stage in front of a few hundredpeople and you're feeling
nervous, anxiety, adrenalinepumping, but you don't want to,
but you want to be able todeliver your talk in a calm way
so people can understand you.
The ability to be the driver ofyour bus, go into a little
meditation.
No one even knows you're doingit, you're just sitting there
(25:14):
and you're going into ameditation and the nerves settle
and you walk up on stage andyou present.
You know that's a bit of asuperpower, right?
Or or just say you you've hadan argument with your partner
and you've got to go and talkwith her, but you're you're
feeling like frustrated andyou're emotional, but you really
want to be calm and clear foryour woman or man or whoever,
(25:35):
the ability to be able to bringyourself back to your centre and
then go into the conversationthis is.
I reckon that's cool.
I reckon that's really cool,it's so cool, it's so cool.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
And when people start to realise that, like you said,
you know, I've heard the phraseright, you know you are not
your thoughts, but when you putit that way, it makes me
understand it know even more ofyou know, saying I experience,
I'm experiencing anxiety, yeah,oh, I'm anxious, I'm angry, yeah
you know, yeah, this is whatyou're experiencing, but it's,
(26:10):
that's right I'm not identifyingwith it yes, that's it, man.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Because when we identify as that thought or as
that emotion, our ego, which isour sense of identity, our ego,
grabs onto it.
And for the ego, that's theonly way it can know that it's
real by grabbing onto thisidentification with things that
are transitory.
(26:35):
So the ego is always a bitdefensive and a bit desperate
dude.
That's the.
That's the reason that let'stake the us, for example but it
happens in lots of places butthe us at the moment, with the
recent election, it's the reasonthat friends are not friends
anymore because they voted fordifferent parties.
And it's like, hang on a second, but you guys were friends and
they're going yeah, but youvoted for that and you voted for
(26:56):
that.
So they're identifying.
They're not saying I voted forrepublicans or I voted for
democrats.
They're going I am a republicanor I am a democrat.
It's like, hang on, when youwere born, you weren't any of
that.
You were just a soul in ababy's body going wow, lights
and sounds and toys and stuff.
(27:19):
You weren't born as a Democrat.
That's just what happenedthrough your life.
That's not who you are, but weidentify it.
It's like someone who'spro-choice or pro-life.
They say I'm a pro-choicerthat's who I am by identity,
right, or pro-vax, anti-vax.
I had friends here in Australia,family members, who said you
(27:42):
are not a part of this familyanymore and you are not welcome
here.
I'm like, oh my Lord, you, justyou, just what do you call it
when you cut?
You just cut someone out, youjust cut your daughter out of
your family, out of your lifebecause she didn't want to get
vaccinated.
But the reason they've donethat is because their ego
(28:03):
identified with I'm a pro-vaxxer, so and our ego gets super,
super defensive.
And for the ego it's it's lifeand death, it's war man.
We're going to go to war overthis.
And it's like, wow, can weremember that we're spiritual
beings, all connected and weactually um can come, come back
into a place of love andunderstanding with each?
Speaker 1 (28:20):
other.
You know, yeah, that's I mean.
What you just said is huge.
You know the ego, right, andthe ego wants the labels.
The ego is the one that wantsthe labels right, the house to
identify with, the car toidentify with right.
Talk about that.
(28:42):
What's the role of the ego?
How can folks get a betterunderstanding of?
Is this my?
That's why I think meditationis so huge and quiet time is so
huge.
Is because a moment to reallythink about like wait, do I
actually want that?
or yeah, my ego that wants that,to get the validation and to
have that label, you know, butis that actually me?
(29:04):
Is that truly what I value?
Right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Yeah.
What's your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2 (29:13):
So, look, we need to have an ego, apparently, because
we've got one.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
We're supposed to have one, right, because there
it is.
And you know, and apparentlythe ego evolved with us as a
species.
You know, as we evolved as aspecies, we developed this sense
of separation, this sense ofidentity, and our ego really is
quite simply our sense ofidentity.
It's who we think we are,separate from the outside world,
(29:41):
and it developed as aprotection mechanism to keep us
safe.
Right, there's a lion runningat me right now, and I'm not the
lion, we're not all one, it'snot kumbaya.
It's like no, no, no, thelion's going to eat me and I got
to save myself.
So I have this sense of me,protect myself, right.
And then we understood eachother in relationship to each
(30:01):
other.
So you and I, if we were partof the same tribe, and then I
have this experience, and then Ilook at you and I'm like, did
you have that experience?
So we look at each other and wesee each other and we connect
in relationship, and thenlanguage forms and we start to
be able to talk, right, and sowe're working together.
But I know you're you and I'mme, and I notice our differences
.
You know you're taller than meor something, or you're a bit
(30:23):
faster than me or whatever.
We notice the differencesbecause the ego is trying to
understand itself.
So the ego looks around andgoes well, I know what I'm not,
I know what I am.
And it's trying to understanditself as a separate entity.
But the ego is an illusion,right, we're not born with one.
Brand new babies don't have anego.
They're just all spirit.
(30:45):
They're just coming out,looking around and it's just.
They're connected to everythingaround them, right.
But the ego forms when we'relittle and we start to think
that we're separate.
So it's there to protect us.
It's very defensive.
It's fueled by fear right,because it's a protection
mechanism.
So it gets its petrol, it getsits juice from fear, whereas the
(31:07):
spirit gets its fuel from love.
Right.
The ego says we're separate.
Our spirit says no man, we'reone, we're connected.
Right.
The ego judges, has to judgeeveryone, judging around,
judging people positively andnegatively, but it's all about
itself.
The ego notices difference.
You look different to me.
(31:28):
Now I'm going to judge youbecause you look different to me
and it's fearful of differenceand many other things.
The ego wants to look good.
Hates looking stupid.
The ego wants to look good.
Hates looking stupid.
The ego wants to get even.
You know, you got me, I'm goingto get you back.
Ego, that's all ego.
Right, the ego needs to beright, right.
(31:50):
Someone says something thatdoesn't even matter, yeah.
Someone says, oh, at the superbowl there was like how many
people go to the super bowl?
How many people roughly were atthe super bowl, do you know?
Speaker 1 (32:02):
uh, it has to be in the six figures maybe right.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
So someone says, someone says there was 112 000
people at the super bowl andsomeone else goes no, it wasn't,
it was 118.
And they go no, it was 112.
They go it's 118.
And they start fighting overit's like, guys, it actually
doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter, but to theiregos it does, because their ego
needs to be right.
Or how's this dude, you go to adinner party, right, and you're
(32:29):
sitting there and your friendsare there and they're a couple,
and you're sitting around thedinner party and you're talking
about vacations, right?
And he says, oh, yeah, we went.
Yeah, we went to Costa Rica in2012.
And he wants to tell a storyabout Costa Rica and she says,
no, honey, it wasn't 2012.
That was 2013.
And he goes no, I'm pretty sureit was 2012.
And she goes no, it was 2013.
(32:51):
And they start fighting aboutthe year.
And everyone else at the tableis going tell about costa rica.
Guys, we don't mind which yearit was in, right, that's just
your ego needs to be right.
So as we start to get moreawareness of our ego, we can
notice it and, like yousuggested before, it's a really,
(33:11):
really powerful habit to form.
To pause, right.
So someone says something.
You're about to react.
Just pause, take a breath, usethat awareness, check in with
what you're about to say.
Check in, oh, ego, you werejust about to try and prove that
we're right.
And is that serving the greatergood?
Does it actually matter, or canwe just let that go?
(33:35):
You know, have that littlemoment to check in and is this
the, the values that I aspire tobe right now?
And check in with your corevalues and go.
Actually, no, I don't want tofight over what year we went to
costa rica.
I'm just gonna say yeah, yep,yep, and tell the story about
costa rica.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
You know, yeah, so are you saying that it's we need
to have a a healthyrelationship with the ego, right
?
You know?
You hear, yes, the, the phraselike ego death, right, kill the
ego, right?
No, but like you said, hey, we,because the ego has um in our
(34:09):
lives, it's been some benefit,right, yeah?
Speaker 2 (34:14):
ego right, it's lots of.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
It's helped us, you know, achieve.
It's helped us, you know, evenyou know our friends and maybe
getting the spouse that you have, like you know, your ego
allowed you to go and get thingsin life right.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
And kept you safe as well, and kept you safe as well,
and you can have a healthysense of identity, you can have
a healthy ego, and so, yeah, Idon't think we should try and
kill the ego or get rid of theego.
I think we should be curating ahealthy ego which you can do.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Yeah, what's healthy and healthy ego.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Well, if my sense of identity is that I'm a kind,
caring, generous, loving,open-minded, action taking man
who's on a mission to helpamplify positive ripples into
waves of good contribution,that's a sense of identity
that's healthy.
Yeah, my sense of who am I kind, caring, caring.
(35:16):
This is what I aspire to beright, kind, caring, generous,
open-minded, loving,action-taking, compassionate.
This is a sense of identity.
This is who I think I am, andit's healthy, it's good for me
and it's good for those aroundme, you know.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Yeah, yeah, I love that.
I love the fact, as you said,you know, the ego is driven by
fear.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah, we'll be okay yeah, I do, I have that
conversation.
I do man like when I, becausemy ego is still as as noisy as
everyone's right yeah I'm justmore aware of when it's my ego,
because I've been practicing itfor a long time.
And I'm walking down the streetand I hear my ego.
Or I'm driving in my car andyou know, and there's a slip
(36:04):
lane coming in and we're mergingand I leave a spot and and
someone cuts in front of me andthey don't say thank you or
anything, they just kind of cutin or maybe they even do the
bird out the window or somethingright, and my ego goes you know
, fucking rude person orwhatever it says, judging them,
gone, like.
And I hear it and I go hey, ego, bless your cotton socks.
(36:27):
I know you're trying to keep ussafe, right, but there's no
lion coming to eat us right now.
We're fine.
That driver's an upset person,that's their story.
That's okay, right?
So I have this littleconversation with my ego and
when you call your ego out, itkind of goes, yeah, but it kind
of just goes.
(36:48):
It's like busted, you, bustedme, all right.
It's like, for me my ego islike a 13-year-old boy, right,
who knows everything and istrying to get his own way.
And then, when you call it outwith love, right, and my spirit
comes in and says hey, I see you, darling, it's all right, you
know.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
And the 13-year-old boy goes oh bastard.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
And then also too, when you do that you're able to
kind of reframe things.
Yeah, completely reframe things, Reframe things.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
You can change your perspective on things Completely
.
Usually it's out of love, hey.
It's out of love.
Yeah, that person's in a rush.
We have no idea what's going on.
That person has just cut youoff.
Hey, nothing is wrong with them.
Maybe they're in a rush, wedon't know right, yeah, it comes
out of love.
Once you reframe it, it feelslike.
(37:40):
It seems like, like you said,the spirit, what feeds the
spirit, is love.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Yes, yes.
And when you reframe it likethat and you change to coming
into that place of coming from aplace of love, that is way
healthier.
You're living a much healthierlife now.
You're spending way less timebeing angry and stressed and
driven by fear.
You're spending way more timefeeling that you're coming from
a place of love and you're aquantumist and the
(38:08):
parasympathetic nervous systemis activated and it's just
healthier, you, you, you stayhealthier, you live longer,
you're happier, yourrelationships are better, your
work is better, everything getsbetter, you know 100.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
So I want to wrap it around, because we talk about
communication, right right, andyou talk about conscious
communication.
We just talked about all thethings that we need to be
conscious of thought, ego, right, and we talk about
communication and you kind ofjust open the door up to it.
It's like, you know, notallowing our ego to get in the
(38:44):
way of you know, when we'releading teams, when we're
leading people, communicationwith a friend, communication
with a spouse, communicationwith a stranger, communication
with your kids, siblings,whatever the case may be.
Yeah, where did all of thiskind of get created?
Conscious communication, why isit important?
We'd love for you to walk usthrough it.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
Yeah, it's fundamental, isn't it?
I mean you just mentioned it Inevery aspect of our life.
Our ability to communicateunderpins our ability to be
effective.
In every aspect of our life, Imean, whether it's just taking
something from an idea andmanifesting it into reality.
If you can't communicate youridea, you know, if einstein
(39:28):
couldn't communicate the theoryof relativity, all of his genius
understandings of the universewouldn't have meant anything to
anyone.
Right?
When you're in relationshipwith your spouse, if things are
not going well, it's becauseyou're not communicating well
with each other.
You both love each other.
You're just missing each otherin the communication piece,
right in, in work, in, in sport,in, in everything that we do.
(39:55):
Communication underpins ourability to be effective in
relationship and the quality ofour relationships is directly
correlated to the quality of ourlife.
Not the hat, not how big yourhouse is or how many cars you
had or what.
None of that constituteshappiness.
It's the quality of yourrelationships and that is the
quality of your communication.
(40:16):
Right, and man?
I've been watching.
You know like I wrote the bookin the first year of COVID and I
was watching man.
I was locked up at home andhere in Victoria in Australia,
we had the longest, strictestlockdowns in the world.
Anyone who thinks they gotlocked down, pretty bad.
You weren't living where Ilived, man.
(40:37):
We got locked down for twoyears, dude.
Anyway, I had time to write abook and I was noticing that the
communication is deteriorating.
The quality of ourcommunication is deteriorating
and people are shouting at eachother with the caps lock on, you
know, especially in the digitalworld and cancelling each other
and going after each other withvitriol online, and the
(41:01):
algorithms love it because it'sattention bait.
It's keeping us glued to thesescreens.
Bait, right, it's keeping usglued to these screens so the
algorithms keep putting more ofit in front of us because,
because the business model ofmeta is to just have us have us
glued to the screen as long aspossible, right?
So there's this kind of trainwreck and watching this
communication deteriorate.
(41:22):
I'm like, wow, we need some helpwith this.
We need to bring our attentionback to communication, and
communication comes from theLatin noun communicatio, which
means a sharing, not a telling,a sharing, and it comes from the
verb communicare, which meansto make common, the word common,
community, communication,commune, and I thought we need
(41:47):
to bring our attention back tothat.
So I started writing the bookand then I got a book writing
mentor and she said, jem, youneed to pick a niche, because
it's a great book but it's toobroad, so you need to pick
someone to write for.
She said, I think men could dowith this book.
I think men really could dowith some help with this, you
know, because we don't raise ourboys to communicate, we raise
our boys to be good at sport orto win.
(42:07):
And so I wrote the book for menand, funnily enough, man, it's
mainly women that buy the book,and I get emails from women
saying, hey, thanks for yourbook, it's awesome.
Now I've got to try and get myhusband to read it.
But the book got picked up byMango Publishing in Florida.
Thank you, shout out to Mangoand my agent, um, scott Scott
(42:31):
Miller, um, who's the MillerGray agency over in the states.
They picked me up, they theybelieved in this random Aussie
guy and said yeah, yeah, we'vegot your back.
Come on, let's get this bookout.
So it's been republished secondedition, with all of the
American spelling and everythinglike that, and, um, and it's
available, man, and there's theplug.
Yeah, I can tell my agent, Iplugged the book.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
But, hey, I wanted you to because, first of all,
communication is so importantand being able to communicate I
couldn't tell you how being ableto effectively communicate
helps your confidence to be ableto just share and communicate
and also to add value and alsoto get value added to you and
(43:16):
hear folks stories.
You know, I was just in Mexicoand I don't speak Spanish very
well and I couldn't tell you howmuch it was a wake up call for
me that I couldn't communicatethe way I wanted to and how it
made me feel right, made me feellike an outsider to something.
Right, that I couldn't reallyhear the stories of all these
(43:40):
amazing people that I waswalking past.
Right, maybe I could have a,you know, hola como estas, but I
couldn't really go deep, right,yeah, yeah, deep conversation
it is.
I don't know what brainchemicals fire off when you have
a deep conversation and youbuild connection and community,
(44:03):
but it's so important and, likeyou said, a lot of folks, you
know they're online, right, it'snot necessarily in person that
you hear people shouting at eachother and counseling each other
.
That's right, yeah, right, mostof the time, yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
Online or in their car because they're in a closed
steel box?
Yeah, online because they'resitting in their lounge, because
they're in a closed steel box.
Online because they're sittingin their lounge room right, but
in person, you're right, man,it's like it's different.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
Yeah, 100%.
So I think it's huge and I lovethe work that you're doing.
Jim, where can folks find you?
And I forgot to even mention tomy audience that you are in
australia.
Um, yeah, so hopefully theythey realize that as they heard
the podcast.
But, um, where can folks findyou?
Where can folks follow yourjourney, get in touch with you?
(44:57):
What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (44:58):
yeah, yeah, well, I mean, best place to start is the
website jemfullercom.
On there, man, man, you can getaccess to all my resources and
you can contact me.
I'm still really accessible andalso I'd love to give a gift to
your audience, man, if theywould like.
Yes, I have a course on therewhich is an introduction to
(45:21):
mindfulness meditation course.
You just go to my website andfollow the tab to courses.
When you get to the checkoutpage, rather than paying for it
in the coupon code box, just putthe word podcast into into
there and it'll make it free andyou can download it.
Keep it forever.
It's a super easy, simpleintroduction to mindfulness
meditation.
Um, yeah, so you can geteverything there.
(45:43):
You can follow me on insta jamfuller.
On insta I post content.
I try and help people there aswell, and we run high ticket
retreats in the himalaya inindia.
Um, I'm actually going to bestateside in a couple of weeks,
man.
I'm speaking at a conference insanta barbara with a friend of
mine, and then I'm hanging outwith some friends in san fran,
(46:03):
and then I've got an in-personevent down in san diego.
So, um, I'm gonna be.
Yeah, at least on the samecontinent as you in a few weeks
bro and and you'll be in abeautiful place um chicago.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
The midwest is uh.
I don't think you would want tobe here right now, not until
may or june anyway.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
So yeah, yeah, I'll come.
I'll come visit you um in yoursummer.
I'll come visit you.
It might not be for three years, but it'll happen I love it.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
So, yes, um the mindfulness made easy.
Right, we go to your website,um go to the courses and um hit
pat pot podcast.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
Okay, all right, sounds great.
Well, jim, we appreciate youadding value to us.
It was a lot that folks canlisten to.
They might need to listen tothis a few times, but some very
great ways to be more consciousand to kind of live life so that
(47:11):
you are in more of a flow state, and so I appreciate you.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Yeah, I appreciate you too, brother.
Thanks for having me on yourshow, thank you.
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