The Detached podcast
Welcome to the podcast. This is a space where I get to vocalize my thoughts and dive deep into conversations with some truly remarkable individuals. It’s not about surface-level chit-chat—this is where we get into the real stuff. We talk about the things that matter: health, fitness, relationships, and the process of breaking free from the limitations we place on ourselves.
I don’t believe in small talk, because nothing meaningful ever comes from it. So, let's dig deep into the topics that can actually change your life. I want to bring you value, provoke your thinking, and help you see the world differently.
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Sophia
The Detached podcast
EP 75 : Eric Edmeades - Navigating Work-Life Balance and Resilience.
Balancing the fine line between work and leisure, Eric joins us to share his journey of unexpected professional opportunities in the vibrant city of Dubai. What begins as a vacation transforms into a seamless blend of work and relaxation, offering a fresh perspective on achieving a fulfilling work-life balance. Eric's reflections, drawn from his childhood in Canada and South Africa, enrich our conversation with insights on how contrasting experiences shape views on wealth and opportunity. Together with his girlfriend, Eric finds inspiration through travel, illustrating how personal experiences can redefine our understanding of success and satisfaction.
We also navigate the concept of resilience through adversity, introducing the idea of the "Hindsight Window." Eric shares personal stories, highlighting the importance of swiftly closing these windows to transform challenges into opportunities for growth. Through anecdotes about his upbringing, including his father's struggles and the impact of supportive relationships like that with his partner Kirstie, Eric emphasizes the significance of resilience. The conversation expands to cover cultural perceptions of victimhood, parenting dynamics, and the influence of childhood experiences—each story unraveling the complexities of personal development amidst societal expectations.
Finally, the importance of communication and the impact of detaching from electronics are explored as we aim for a more mindful existence. Eric sheds light on the balance between business, family, and self, sharing valuable lessons from his journey. As we examine personal growth through meditation and explore the benefits of stepping away from technology, the narrative underscores the importance of nurturing supportive environments for both personal and professional success. Join us for this engaging episode, where rich narratives and thoughtful insights coalesce to offer valuable perspectives on leading a balanced and resilient life.
Well, Eric, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. I really want to kind of get into what. Has you come into Dubai this visit?
Speaker 2:Well, a couple of different things. I came to Dubai for the first time about three years ago, actually on a vacation, but about two weeks before we got here I was on one of our WildFit client calls and there was a woman on the call who was talking about how WildFit had changed her life and what have you. And then she mentioned she worked in the government here in Dubai. And then, of course, dubai has a big obesity and diabetes problem and wouldn't I like to talk to some people in government about that? And so my vacation turned into a working vacation pretty quickly. And then I met lots of other people here and I've been back two or three times a year since and this time around it was a follow up I did a keynote talk at the Emirates annual leadership and sales conference. They bring all their people in from around the world and that went really well. So they asked me to come back and do some more work with them, so I spent the day at Emirates HQ today. It was that was. It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I feel like probably any trip that you go on. It's probably hard for you to take a vacation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know it's so funny. People talk a lot about, you know, work, life balance and all this kind of stuff, and I go well to some degree. If you want work-life balance, it's because maybe work isn't that enjoyable. You know, and in a weird way I, like my girlfriend, I figured out the other day that we've been together for some years now and we'd never really taken a vacation ever, except we've been to over 30 countries together. We've been to Africa numerous times on safari, but they're work related and research related and you know we've been everywhere and most of our trips are basically a working vacation to some degree. But we finally took one where it was just like her and me and nobody else and no meetings and what have you in the Maldives, and it was absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 1:Do you find it hard to rest? Absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 2:Do you find it hard to rest? No, no, we're very good at resting.
Speaker 2:I you know I'm I'm a sprinter, I uh I wouldn't do very well in um. You know, in a, a job that asked for some degree of monotony, I just wouldn't work for me. I'm really good at intense brainstorming, strategy performance training, that kind of thing, and then I'm really good at at um, at resting, and I would, I wouldn't even really, I wouldn't even really in a sense call it resting, because it's where some of the best thinking ever happens. You know I kiteboard and surf and you know I've done lots of mountain climbing and all of those things are, say, a form of rest um, but they, uh, they're also where some of the best ideas come from yeah, I think you need a bit of stillness in order to really ignite your creativity.
Speaker 1:With that being said, do you think sometimes Dubai would be like a difficult place to live in, with how stimulating it is?
Speaker 2:Yes and no. I mean, look, I lived in Vancouver for a lot of years and it's also a very hopping interesting. You know, there's always something going on in the town. We this trip, we were thinking of doing it, and then it wasn't happening. And then I got an email and two hours later we were driving to the airport to come to Dubai and it was very, very last minute and we've been here for two weeks and we barely even announced that we were coming and yet our calendar was full.
Speaker 2:I mean, we have so many friends that live here and we have so many friends that visit here on a regular basis that it really did fill the calendar. And I imagine that we'd have to developburg, cape Town, new York, la, singapore, bangkok I mean India and a variety of cool places. I think we would be able to find great peaceful destinations and experiences using this as a hub.
Speaker 1:Even using here as a hub all the different states around here, there's so many mountainous areas that you can go hike in and you can really get the best of both worlds With you growing up. How was that? What was your childhood like? What was the ecosystem that you lived in?
Speaker 2:It was well, I was born originally originally, of course it was originally I was born. But anyway I was born in South Africa and my family was multi-generationally there and my parents decided to immigrate to Canada when I was small. So I became Canadian at eight and we moved to Canada and shortly after that my parents split up. My dad had some at that time alcohol problems and so forth and it kind of led to a little disruption and so I grew up in kind of a bizarre combination of. You know, we certainly were not wealthy and I remember my parents sitting me down one day to explain that we didn't have money for the holidays. There'd be no Christmas this year.
Speaker 1:That sort of thing.
Speaker 2:And, by the way, they pulled it off and made it an incredible Christmas anyway. But at the same time my grandparents were very wealthy and they sort of disowned my parents for leaving. But every couple of years they'd send us plane tickets and have us come and visit, and of course they lived in total luxury. Mercedes comes and picks us up at the airport and they have a beach house on the most famous, prestigious beach in South Africa. And so I grew up in this weird contrast.
Speaker 1:I in fact, was that your father's mother and father, or?
Speaker 2:that was my mother's parents, my mother's parents. And I remember I was doing an event with Robert Kiyosaki, you know, rich Dad, poor Dad a while ago, and I said I'm seriously tempted to write a book called Rich Dad, poor Dad 2, t-double-o also because I'd grown up with that same contrast, you know the, the seeing what it's like to like to grow up with a lot of scarcity and concern and fear about money and then to equally, see complete abundance on the other side. And, um, I I'm kind of grateful for that contrast. I think it, it it showed me what was possible, um, and it, um, it showed me what was possible and it really, I think, set me up, was possible and it really, I think, set me up also for tremendous gratitude for what I've been able to create in my life.
Speaker 1:To go back to your father's alcohol addiction as per se, um did his parents have alcohol addiction towards it in his family or was? Do you always remember your father having that Do?
Speaker 2:you always remember your father, half-in-law. You know, my dad's dad died just before I was born and, yeah, I would say he had an alcohol problem. I think there are, in a sense, there's kind of two types of alcoholics. There's alcoholics that don't ever let it get bad enough to ruin their lives, and that's the worst kind. It's the worst kind because it never stops it. Just you know, they're able to keep it above the line. They don't lose their job.
Speaker 1:They don't lose their marriage.
Speaker 2:They just hold on and um, and I think that's a horrible form of it. And I I think that's what my um, I think that's what my uh grandfather had Um, and, and he died young as a result of it. On the other hand, my dad had the other kind, that's, the you had straight for rock bottom. You, you, you, you're, you know everything in your life falls apart, you lose everything, your life nearly ends and then you go oh, I don't want this. And you recover. And so he spent the last 40 plus years of his life in sobriety and a completely different life.
Speaker 2:And you know that's very inspiring to me, no question about it. And funny enough, I don't drink. I haven't had alcohol since I was 19. And I wasn't an alcoholic. I've maybe been drunk a dozen times in my life, if that. I don't even remember. But seeing what substances did in my family, I guess it gave me an increased sense of awareness. It's like okay, you know, I just I'm just not really interested in following that path.
Speaker 1:How did you feel in your father's presence then, whilst he had his alcohol addiction?
Speaker 2:That was challenging. I had a funny experience. I wrote this book, the Evolution Gap, and I refer in the book to my dad at one point and I made a comment that growing up with my dad was like one minute Indiana Jones and then one minute Keith Richards or Sid Vicious, and that's because that's what it was like. But the funny thing was I'd kind of, you know, you're right, you're right, you're right, and I'd forgotten about that. And then I I actually hired him to edit the book for me and I forgot that that was in there and luckily he had a pretty good sense of humor about it.
Speaker 2:But that is what it was like. I mean, he was the best, most amazing, coolest dad in the world and he was really not good too. And you know, I, as a kid, I, you know he took us on the most incredible fishing trips in northern Canada, where nobody gets to go, and because he was an avid outdoorsman and avid fisherman and and so he was absolutely phenomenal in many, many ways. But then of course he was, you know, belligerent and abusive and difficult and unpredictable, and that was really tough as kids, I mean. I think that I consider myself fairly resilient today and I think that some of the things that I've been able to create in my life are because of that resilience, and I have to say that that resilience is the result of growing up with that ambiguity and that unpredictable lifestyle, and so, in that sense, he was the perfect dad for me.
Speaker 1:I'm so happy that you can look back now on all those episodes and see the silver lining on it, because that's not easy for everyone to do.
Speaker 2:You know that is interesting. I gave a talk many years ago now in Mykonos for Mindvalley, and it was on something I've been writing about for some years and I'll likely do a book on it. But it's called the Hindsight Window, and the Hindsight Window is a term I developed for defining the time period between an adverse event and the day that one day you reconcile, One day you recognize it as a good event. So, for example, somebody gets fired and as long as they're angry and resentful about that, they have an open window. But one day, hopefully, they look back and go oh, thank God, I got fired, and that's the day they close the window.
Speaker 2:And in the talk I gave and in the book I'm working on, one of the principles is that the longer that window is open, the more you suffer and, frankly, the more difficult your future becomes.
Speaker 2:You see, if you have a lot of anger and resentment and guilt and shame about your past, then you will automatically assume that the future will be full of those things as well. And so, on the other hand, if you close those windows and you find at least appreciation, if not gratitude, about the events of your past, then suddenly, when you look out at the future. There's nothing to be afraid of. And why I find that interesting is that my dad was a really good example of somebody who had a hard time closing windows. You know he, of course he did some things in his drinking years that he had a lot of shame and guilt about and he just couldn't let them go. You know he, really he held on to them and they, I think, tarnished his experience of life. And it's always been interesting for me to have that contrast where I've had some unbelievably horrible things happen and I've been able to close the window, often instantly or at least quickly.
Speaker 1:Other times it's taken some effort and meditation and and, uh, and, and you know, contemplation do you think the people around you support you in order to close those windows quicker, because you can't survive to have those windows open too long Now?
Speaker 2:yes, I would say that my partner Kirstie, she's phenomenal and when things happen in our lives, I think we're quite lucky that we're both resilient, in similar ways but also in some different ways. So something can come along and knock her off kilter and I'm there and I am able to right the ship for her, but equally, she's able to do that for me. Very rarely do we get knocked off kilter at the same time.
Speaker 1:I just don't think the world happens that way. I think when you're healthy, the other person tends to slide, so you're ready to support them. Then, when you're not so healthy, then it's like your friends or whoever's sat around you the most. I think they're ready to get their hands in and look after you. So it's vice versa. I think a lot of the time or actually there is some episodes in my life where I'm sat in the shit with other people around me. Well, you know the expression misery loves company.
Speaker 2:It doesn't Well? You know the expression misery loves company.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it doesn't.
Speaker 2:Misery loves miserable company.
Speaker 1:True.
Speaker 2:People who are miserable do not like cheerful people. They're like stop that.
Speaker 1:But what they really want is somebody to sit around and have a moan with them and listen. Yeah, so when we go back even to your father's episode in his life, has that leaked into your adulthood in terms of building relationships and friendships?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. I would say that. I mean, first of all, you know, he found sobriety when I was probably 13 years old or something like that. So I have many more years of him sober in my life than I did not sober.
Speaker 1:They say. Obviously the years in between you know, six to nine even are crucial moments for your behaviors and habits.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and of course, those were the years that I was facing it. But I would say that you know, I don't know. You know, one of my favorite expressions about parenting is that it is not our job as parents to prepare our children for the road. It's our job to and sorry, I'll get that backwards and get it right so you can put it in a reel maybe but what I was saying is it's not our job to prepare the road for our children, it's our job to prepare our children for the road.
Speaker 2:And what we're seeing right now I think a lot of, particularly when we look at Canada and the United States and maybe to some degree in Europe is a lot of coddling, a lot of everybody gets a trophy, everybody gets a reward. We have to be careful of the trigger words and all this kind of stuff and we're sheltering children and, as a result, there's less resilience. And I don't know exactly what the right balance is, because I know that there are many people that are broken by disruption and abuse that they face through their children, through their childhood and so forth. But I can tell you that in my life I feel that the adversities that I faced, you know, with my father and also I went to an unbelievably challenging and difficult boarding school, far beyond anything that's reasonable in today's world.
Speaker 1:What was challenging about that? Is there any kind of memories that you have?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I mean I went there at the age of 13. And the first day we got there they said we're going to go out for a run. And we went out for probably about a six mile run. Most 13 year olds can't do that. You know it's, it's and and, but in that run we had to cross a beaver dam that was full of algae and the and the edges were icy, and I mean it was. That was day one.
Speaker 2:The very next day we got in a bus and drove into Northern Alberta and put on backpacks that weighed about as much as we did, and then we hiked 15 miles that night, thinking that we had arrived at our camp destination, to be woken up by whistles at 6am the next morning, to walk that same distance again every day for the next week. Who sent you there? My dad, my dad. It turned out that when he sobered up. Something I've found about alcoholism is that at whatever point somebody becomes an alcoholic or a drug addict, it's almost like in that moment they stop their maturing and spiritual development. So if you become an alcoholic, say, at 19, and you sober up at 30, you're still basically a 19-year-old, right.
Speaker 1:So here was my dad, your life's on pause. Yeah, you paused all that development.
Speaker 2:So my dad sobers up and I'm 13 years old and my mom and I get into a big fight and she kicks me out of the house. I don't think she really meant to. I don't know, we can call her and check. Maybe she did, maybe she didn't. But I took it seriously and I called my dad and said I need to come. And I came to live with him but he's like a year into sobriety. He's not a functioning son at that point, and so we had a lot of friction and difficulty and so his answer to that was off to boarding school. You go and um and then you know it. The difficulty didn't get any easier than what I mentioned.
Speaker 2:We had a snowshoe race every year when you were 13 years old. We did, we trained for whatever. It was seven or weeks or what have you and then ran 26 miles. It's minus 30 outside. It was a very, very intense school. There was extreme bullying. The staff was allowed to use corporal punishment so they could actually swat you or spank you. It was tough, but here's the thing I know students that went there that now have tremendous resentment about it. They feel like they were abused, they feel like it was too much and what have you. But I know other students that went to that school. They're like no, it's what made me, it's what forged me, and I fall into that latter camp. I'm incredibly grateful for the time that I went to that school.
Speaker 1:Why do you feel like people feel like a victim after an episode like this in their life?
Speaker 2:I think there's a number of influences. I think one of them is that sometimes things can go too far. I think it's entirely possible. Again, as a parent, we want to create an environment where our kids can experiment and they can fail and they can try and do things, but we also want to make sure they don't get too badly hurt emotionally or physically. There's a balance, and so one child that faces, say, bullying and abuse, might be broken by that, and another child didn't, you know, didn't get as much, just got a little less, and maybe they got through it. So there might be an intensity issue, but I think actually the bigger issue, in my opinion, is that we've bred a culture that rewards victimhood and it's at every level.
Speaker 2:You know, for example, years ago I was in a car accident. Somebody hit me from behind and you know, I had to call the insurance adjuster. And then, you know, and I had to go and have an exam and all this kind of stuff, and I had a little stiffness in my neck. So I talked to the doctor about it and he goes. Well, I can give you a neck collar if you want I go. No, I don't need one, it's not that bad. I mean, it's been three, four days. If it was going to be bad, I'd know by now I'm going to be okay. And he goes yeah, but you'll get a better settlement if you wear a neck collar. And I said what? And he goes that's how it works around here. And I said no know, there's the way it worked, is I? My insurance company said that I talked to their lawyer to talk to the other one. So I talked to the lawyer and he goes well, how's your life, you know? After the accident, I go it's fine, I just want the repairs to my car, we'll be fine. He goes but isn't your neck sore? I go, yeah, literally, he goes, that's worth money. And I go it's not that sore, honestly, I'm not interested in that. And he goes you don't understand. Soft tissue damage is really difficult to prove. So all you have to do is act really hurt, and then you could get $20,000. Now I said what? And he goes yeah, you just got to wear a neck collar, but don't let anybody catch you on camera playing golf or anything. You got to wear the neck collar. And the first thought that ran into my mind was I remember as a kid, you know, wanting to miss school and kind of feeling a little sick but then acting sick to not go to school. But pretty soon you are sick. I don't want to walk around pretending I have a sore neck and making manifesting that I would have one.
Speaker 2:But our culture has been set up that way that if you're the underdog, if you've been injured, if you, if it was harder for you than for everybody else, there's greater rewards. Great example you have two children giving a presentation to the auditorium the parents, the teachers, the other students. The one child walks up and gives a polished presentation, nails. It really does a great job, great props, slides, nails it. That kid's going to get an applause, no question about it going to happen. Second kid walks up really nervous, nervous, you know, freaking out a little bit. You can see a little sweat on the brow, a little twitch in the and then stutters a little bit and stammers a little bit and then the slides didn't work and but he powered through and he made it happen. Which kid gets the bigger applause? Second one. Which kid gets the bigger hug? Second one. And every other kid, including the first kid, sees that and they make an unconscious decision that if I make things look harder than they really are, I will get bigger rewards. And I've been sharing this principle in our speaking academy when we teach people communication and speaking skills, and I share that. It's so interesting.
Speaker 2:I went to my little girls. Two of my daughters go to the same school the eight-year-old and the 17-year-old and they have this thing called presentation day every six weeks. So you go there and the students present the various projects they're working on. And we saw twice. In the first bit of it there were four kids doing their parts and they memorized lines and so on, and in both groups one of the kids struggled, One of the kids really struggled, couldn't remember the line you could see, and in each case that kid got a separate, independent applause.
Speaker 2:Now nobody understands what they think they're doing is saying well done, and they are and they are. But what they don't realize is the meaning that that child is creating is. Well, you know, I get extra applause. And it's not even that child that has the problem, it's the other three. The other three are going wow, that guy got more than we did, more respect, more love, more connection than we did. Why? Because it was harder for them, and so we learned this victim mentality, and I think that that type of stuff is just pervasive in our various cultures around the world.
Speaker 1:Now, what could we do to put a lid on that?
Speaker 2:Well.
Speaker 1:I mean. I think that Do you know what? I think? The parameters are getting so stretched and we're so exposed to people's trauma stories that I think when is there going to be a level where it goes too far?
Speaker 2:I think that ship has sailed. I mean, you know, to me it really has gone too far, and I'll give you a sensitive version of it, and that is that when the Me Too movement started, I mean that was necessary. There is no question that men in positions of power were abusing that power and that women were being taken advantage of and abused in horrible ways. We needed a movement that gave them a voice and there were some people that tried to take advantage of that. There's a really interesting case.
Speaker 2:I believe the actor's name was Aziz Ansari, and I remember reading this article that a woman wrote, and the article was all about Me Too. You know how abusive he'd been and I'm paraphrasing to some degree, but the article basically said that they met at this event and they're both into photography and they're both using the same vintage old camera, and that got them talking. And then he invited her on a date and they went on the date and then he seemed to be in a bit of a hurry at the end of the date. So you know he she didn't get to finish her wine, but she agreed to go back to his house and then they were fooling around a little bit, but she just he wasn't very you know, it's just the connection wasn't there. So she kind of said no, I don't know if I want to go any further. And he goes, well, we could go a little bit further. And then she agreed to go a little bit further and then she left.
Speaker 2:That's not a to me that's not a me too situation. That's a bad date situation and it's a series of bad decisions on her behalf. But the me too culture had created this thing, where the victims got tons of support. What was she looking for? She was looking for all that support, and so what do you do about that? Well, I think that any of us that have kids, we can start by making sure that our children have a balance between safety and risk, that we support them.
Speaker 2:In fact, I just did a video on Instagram this morning and I saw this gorgeous clip of this father. He's a gymnastics coach and his daughter does a big tumble and she's supposed to land standing on his hand and she misses it and it doesn't work, and you can just see. And she's supposed to land standing on his hand and she misses it and it doesn't work. And you can just see and it's public, there's people watching and you can just see she's really devastated. She doesn't look like she's more than seven or eight years old and I'm looking at it.
Speaker 2:And then you don't get to hear their dialogue, but you do get to see what happened and you can see that he's talking to her and she's like no, he's like one more and he goes. And then she agrees one more, one more. Now he's a brilliant man, I'd love to meet him. He gets her to agree to give one more try in front of everybody she's failed in front of everybody. And he convinces her one more try. But instead of sending her away to do the run-in, he picks her up into a move that they've done many times before, which where he tosses her forward so she rolls onto the ground in a somersault, so he lets her have a little victory right away.
Speaker 2:And then she stands up, turns around, runs back into his arms, does the double flip, lands on his hand and it's magical and it required him to give her that little push and to let her know that it was okay to fail, and let her know that it was okay to experiment. I think, as parents, what we need to do is find the balance. You know, yes, we want to protect them from hurting themselves badly, but we can't protect them from everything.
Speaker 1:If we try to protect them from everything, they won't try anything. They'll never learn. Growth is in the pain of figuring things out. So when you mentioned, you got kicked out of your house when you were a teenager.
Speaker 2:It wasn't the first or last time.
Speaker 1:What made you rebel as a child?
Speaker 2:You know, I think that you know, growing up with the uncertainty that I grew up with with my dad and so on, I very quickly had to develop a sense of autonomy, that I knew that my, I felt like my survival was really up to me. I, you know, we had a very difficult family event on the Christmas Eve when I was six or seven years old and and my mom and my dad were having a big fight and my dad was very drunk and all this stuff was going on and I and my mom shouted down the hallway for me she's like you know, call the police. Now I'm seven years old. Like no seven-year-old should have to call the police, like that's just, you know. But what, what could I do? But what was interesting is is that in my heart, I absolutely knew that my dad wasn't going to hurt anybody other than maybe himself. I knew, I knew and I knew that inviting the police into this situation was a bad idea. I was seven, I knew this, and so, instead of calling the police, I called my dad's best friend. I called John and I went to the phone, called John and I said look, there's some things going on here. I really could use your help. John understood immediately why I didn't call the police and he came over Now. He did call them, but he knew he'd get to our house first. So he got to our house as soon as he walked in, my dad settled down and calmed down.
Speaker 2:Something I had learned by the time I was seven years old was that temporary insanity can be neutralized by respect. When you're in a temporarily insane state for whatever reason, if somebody that you really respect walks in that's never seen you insane before, you'll stop. And I knew that. And so the minute John walked in, my dad was like John, let's have a beer. And it all ended. So by the time the police came, there was nothing to diffuse. Now, because I grew up with stuff like that, I became a practical psychologist and I felt like I had to protect my brother. I mean, I bullied him horribly. That's like sorry, nick.
Speaker 1:I did. How many people in your family Just me and my mom and my dad?
Speaker 2:my younger brother and me and I. But I had, I had arrived at a place where I got that my, my survival was really up to me, which made me very independent. But that also made me a pain in the butt, you know like. So it meant that I stood up for myself, probably too much, and and um, and to be fair to my mom, I mean she did a great job. Single mom, two teenagers, all the stuff she went through with my dad. She did a phenomenal job of making our lives amazing as far as, as far as I can tell. But that didn't stop us from having the odd, you know, serious disagreement, and one of those disagreements ended with that's it. You can go live with your father.
Speaker 1:I know the feeling. I know the feeling I'm I. I am from a separated family as well, so I know the feeling. But, um with the separation of your parents, do you feel like that's had an impact on you? Um with having a long-term relationship?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah it it has. My experience of this is that I've changed my entire rules about dating over the last couple of years. Not that I'm dating anymore. I don't need to and I never will again.
Speaker 1:But what were those rules?
Speaker 2:Well, in the old days. If you think about the way people date today, I mean you know you meet somebody. What are the normal questions you ask them. You know, what do you do for a living, what do you do for fun, all that kind of stuff. Normal dating questions? I suppose Not anymore. My my, if I was dating and any of my friends that are dating, I'm hearing your new questions. Question number one tell me about your last three breakups. I want to know exactly how they went, because I want to know how you break up, because I want to know how much danger I might be in. I want to know now and the other one-.
Speaker 1:Do you know what I find, though? People often say, oh, if they mention something about their ex, like it's a red flag. I hate when people say this.
Speaker 2:No, no, you should want them to talk about their ex.
Speaker 1:I want to know about it because then I understand who you are as a person as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you want to hear oh, we were together for four years and we kind of grew apart. It was a bit tough the last six months, but I played golf with him just a few weeks ago. That's what I want to hear. I don't want to hear, oh, it was horrible and hateful, and you don't want to hear. But then the next question is tell me about your parents, Because I can tell you that if their parents are still together, that's generally a good sign, as long as there's not ongoing abuse and that kind of stuff, but ongoing abuse and that kind of stuff. But if their parents are divorced, you want to know about their parents' divorce, because that's how they learn to divorce.
Speaker 2:I, unfortunately have divorced twice and I didn't know about these dating questions at the beginning. Had I known about them, I might not have chosen that particular style of relationship. In both cases, my ex-wives parents divorced and wouldn't speak to each other for 30 years. So guess what they learned? I don't have that as a frame of reference. My parents divorced and as soon as my dad found sobriety, he would start coming and visiting our house. My mom let him stay at our house.
Speaker 2:We had great friendships. We had vacations together. She worked very hard to make sure that we had great time with my dad. She did not try to obstruct that in any way. She was supportive of our relationship with our dad. And then my dad at one point was working on a book Megafauna which is on Amazon and if anybody wants it, it's maybe the best book on human history ever written. But in any event he was working on that book. And then my mom said well, listen, I'm traveling a lot with work right now. Would you come and house sit for me for the next six months.
Speaker 2:She was at the time, working in employee relations at South African Breweries, which was the second largest brewer in the world at the time, and so she was traveling and she said come house, sit and take care of my dogs in my garden. For six months he lived in her house, I think for nine years. They're divorced. I mean he was dating, but they were friends and I just value that so much and, for the most part, I've maintained friendships with most of my exes for years and years and years on end, and so when I started my current relationship, I immediately was like okay, tell me about your parents, tell me about your past breakup, and I watch. And, by the way, we are incredibly good friends with her ex-husband.
Speaker 2:They stayed at our house a few weeks ago. We have dinner with them. When we go, we co-parent together and I think, if I can paraphrase Kirstie about this, I think she would say that, while divorce is incredibly painful and difficult and ultimately should be avoided if it can, the fact is that if you're going to go into it, it it actually could make things even better than they were, even better than they were. They were good and, by the way, I would say that our kids would agree with that, because our kids now have this expanded family, they have forced parents they have, they have more love, they have more opportunities and our life is fantastic.
Speaker 1:I watched a podcast recently with Jordan Peterson. I know you were on Jordan Peterson's podcast, but he actually mentioned about relationships on his and he suggested how people who can't maintain a relationship often aren't so successful. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 2:I think it depends. I mean, sometimes people can't sustain a relationship and it allows them to become unbelievably professionally focused, and I think that's sad and I apologize, this isn't intended to be sexist, but it might be perceived that way. But I think it's even more sad for women. In fact, speaking of Jordan, I was really lucky to spend quite a lot of time with him and I really found him to be an interesting, fascinating, generous and deeply curious guy. And in one of the interviews I watched with him, he's talking to a woman about the choice that women face these days. It's like are you a mom? Are you a full-time mom? Are you a part-time mom? Are you a part-time mom? Are you a professional? And what have you? And I think that's one of the most difficult things that we've done to mothers is made them choose between those things. But then worse than that, because I think they should have the choice, there's no question about it but then what we did is we made either choice bad Women now that stay home to raise their children, oh oh, you're a stay-at-home mom, they get judged for that.
Speaker 2:Equally, go to work, you get judged for that, and I I think that whole exercise is really difficult and in this one interview that I saw with jordan, he uh, you know the woman says, well, you know, I I feel quite lucky that I've avoided all the sleepless nights and wet nappies and all that stuff, and he goes. Yeah, I imagine you probably do feel like you've dodged a bit of a bullet. I mean he goes. It helps that you have a really successful career and I'm sure you get a lot of you know, a lot of positive feelings about that, a lot of reward from that, and he goes.
Speaker 2:I just wonder I wonder how you might feel when you're 65 and alone and in as I watched that interview I felt like it looked like she got hit by a truck. When he said that it's like she'd never thought of it and I think that's really challenging for the people who aren't able to, or choose not to, pursue fulfilling relationship at the cost of their career. So I don't think it necessarily means you can't do it, but I will say from the male perspective, having a supportive, constructive, supportive, constructive, creative source of energy and love is everything that you need to build anything that you want, as much as it sounds woo-woo, I think love drives everything career, passion, everything.
Speaker 1:And with having the success that you have right now, do you think you would have been able to do that without being in a relationship?
Speaker 2:You know it's hard to say. I will say that there have been certain times in my life where things have taken a very big jump my first marriage, my first marriage. Not too long into the marriage I left the job that I was in that paid very, very well and started a business, and so the money situation changed pretty dramatically. And that wasn't my partner's favorite idea and for a number of reasons she decided to leave, and so now I was on my own. And for a number of reasons, she decided to leave, and so now I was on my own and I was in a position where I could focus completely on my business.
Speaker 2:The very painful part of it is that when she left, she took my son with her against my wishes, and it wasn't the way I wanted things to be. But when I was stuck with that situation it just put me in the situation of well, throw myself into my work. Our business was insolvent at the time that she left and within two or three years I had completely recovered it and created a phenomenal economic situation in that company and eventually sold that business. So I think that the way I would look at it is is that if you have a what were those years like for you, though, though?
Speaker 1:during those times, do you think you had any sort of work-life balance, or?
Speaker 2:I think I did. I think I did. I used to do a lot of wildlife photography and I enjoy spending a lot of time in nature, and so for me it wasn't worth it for me to have a business if I didn't have freedom. And so I routinely disappeared off to Africa for a week or two, and many times the people around me would kind of act like, wow, how can you? You're not, that's not very responsible, and I'm like, no, you don't understand. If you want to build a job, then you can't leave, but if you want to build a business, you have to leave, because there are two addictions that'll keep you trapped in a self-employment situation. I don't care if you have 50 employees, if you have to go to work, you're still self-employed. And the two things that'll trap you there are your addiction to the business and the addiction that the business has for you.
Speaker 2:So every time I went on these long trips, I mean sometimes I remember on one of the trips I went on this huge horseback safari through the, you know, the Okavango Delta in Botswana I mean, we didn't have phones, we didn't, there was no way, so my company had to run on its own. Well, guess what they did. They figured it out, they made mistakes, they learned from those mistakes and had I been there they wouldn't have been able to. I would argue that. Well, by the time I got to about the sixth year of that company, I didn't even have to go to work anymore, like I literally didn't have to be there. I did go sometimes because I needed an office to do my other things, but I don't think I would have gotten to that place if I didn't take those trips and take those experiences for myself. I did not throw myself a hundred percent into work at all. I really I took care of my hobbies and I took care of my passions.
Speaker 1:What kind of boss were you?
Speaker 2:You'd have to ask them. I mean I, I uh would you hire yourself?
Speaker 2:you'd have to ask them. I mean, I, I, uh, would you hire yourself? You know, when you move from one country to another, you often have the opportunity to bring ideas from one country to another that are novel. You know, that's, to a degree, how Starbucks happened. You know. Oh look, this is what an Italian coffee shop looks like. I'll take that to America. So this sort of, you know, almost like a Marco Polo thing, where you travel around and you grab the best of areas and take it.
Speaker 2:Well, what happened when I moved to England was England has a very different workplace culture and they have a very different customer service ethos. I'm not talking about London, London's, separate from England, but I would say that the workplace culture there was quite like, emotionless and quite, you know, stoic and and not very warm, and I would say that the customer service was less than that. And we, so I walked in with my very Canadian sense of life and and so I, I had dinners with my staff, I spoke to them, I made time for them, they, you know, I remember once I had a staff member call me on a Saturday morning and she calls me and goes the police are at my house. I go, why? And they go well, they say they want to take our son. Now she had a stepson and the mother was asking for the son back. And I was like, okay, hold on, Don't let the police in your house, I'll be there in a minute. And these people were long-term low income people. They'd been unemployed for over 10 years before I gave them jobs, so they don't know their rights. So they're like I can tell them not to come in the house. I go, just trust me, I'll be there in 15 minutes, Tell them they can't come in. So she's like okay, she tells the police wait for a minute, we have an advisor coming. And the police wait. I get there and the police are there and I go excuse me, gentlemen. And I walked through and I go what's going on? And they explained to me that the mother was wanting the child back but there was no court proceedings, Like she just called the police.
Speaker 2:So I went out to the police and I go hey, um, what's going on here? And they go, they tell me they got this complaint from them. I go I understand you have a complaint from the mother, but do you have a court order? No, to take possession of the child? No, so it wouldn't even be lawful for you to take him, would it? No, I go. So what you really want to know is that he's happy and healthy and okay. So you can report that back to the mom and then she can. You know, that's what you really want, right? And they go yeah, that's what we really want.
Speaker 2:So I go, okay, and I go into the house and I go Dwayne, the police are here. These are the guys that keep your neighborhood safe. I didn't want him afraid, right. And so he comes out and he's super excited to meet the police and the police ask him how things are and they report back to the mom that he's well. Can you imagine the loyalty that I created with those? I didn't mean to, I was just doing the right thing. So I would say to think I was a lot of fun to work for. We had very long employee retention, we rarely ever lost anybody and I think that that probably supports that idea.
Speaker 1:So you would hire yourself? Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2:I know better than to hire me as an employee. I would. I would. I would have to be directed very well. I wouldn't do well in a nine to five structure. But I certainly would hire myself in a leadership position because that's where I'm comfortable and I think I've done relatively well there.
Speaker 1:How good are you at taking direction from someone else?
Speaker 2:It depends a little bit. Generally, I'd say I'm very good. I have a very clear relationship with feedback and that is that all feedback is free consulting. It doesn't mean that you have to like it, it doesn't mean that they're even right, but you should regard it as free consulting and that way you don't have to get angry and what have you. You can just say, oh, I'm very good at that, I'm willing to take feedback and move on.
Speaker 2:I don't think I would have gotten anywhere close to what I've done if I wasn't like that. I think there are times when I am really clear about the vision that I have for something and at that point if somebody is not on board with that vision and tries to direct me in a different direction, then I can be more focused and more determined. But I would even say that in the most cases where that's happened, I was right to be there. I had a vision for something and I needed it to be that way. But generally speaking, I'm very open to feedback and very open to direction and coaching. I think you have to be.
Speaker 1:How do you measure the feedback from the person who's delivering it?
Speaker 2:Well, the first thing I try to do is separate intent.
Speaker 2:You know, I try to separate intent because what poisons a lot of feedback is believing that the intent of it was bad. I was in a situation where I joined a mastermind, like a very high end, premium mastermind, at the recommendation of a friend of mine, and it was a lot, a lot of money, and I'd never joined one before. And I joined the mastermind and I started going to the meetings and every month I was going to these meetings I had to fly in for them because I lived outside the United States and it was in America and I was flying into the meetings and flying into the meetings but the mastermind was new. They had another mastermind that they'd been running for a very long time, but this mastermind was new and so when I joined, the onboarding process wasn't, say, very smooth. It took me I think it took them four months for them to add me to the Facebook group where I could connect with the other members of the mastermind. And this was I'm telling you, this was a sports car, expensive, mastermind.
Speaker 1:He was running the mastermind. I'm not going to out anybody. Tony Robbins no no, no.
Speaker 2:And so I got about seven months into the mastermind and I realized I was grateful I joined and I got a lot of value from it. But I knew I wasn't going to re-up for another year, re-up for another year. And I generally have a policy that if I'm in a situation like that, if I'm not going to continue the relationship, I want to provide as much notice of that as possible. I don't want to let them know at the last second and I want to give them some feedback as to why, so they can improve things. So I wrote to the people running the mastermind and I said hey, I have loved this, it's been good, I got a lot of value, I'm glad I made the investment. I said, hey, I have loved this, it's been good, I got a lot of value, I'm glad I made the investment. I just want you to know I'm not reconnecting for next year between the flight stuff and so forth. It just doesn't work for me and there are some things that I think could have been done better. And I want to give you some feedback so you can make things better. And I wrote the feedback out, really nice things like just hey, it took four months to onboard me. You guys got to tighten up that onboarding and so on.
Speaker 2:Well, the director, the main guy running the mastermind, he lost it. He just he called me. He was swearing at me, shouting at me down the phone. It was like holy crap, what's going on here? And he goes. You're just trying to get something from me and I'm not asking for anything. I'm not asking for anything from you. I just wanted to give you the feedback. I'm coming to next month's meeting. I'm not mad at you.
Speaker 2:I said in a letter I got value, I'm glad I made the investment, but he couldn't hear it. He couldn't hear it because he'd made an assumption about intent and because he wasn't very good at taking feedback. You know, self-esteem or whatever the issue was and and it really it turned into a big bust up and to this day I mean, listen, I think he runs in his other mastermind. I think he runs very, very well and I recommend people to it all the time, but he just couldn't take that feedback because he misjudged the intent. And what's interesting is that when people are wounded like that, it's like they can't hear anything. We have many mutual friends who have said to him hey, you're wrong about this. I know him, I know Eric, I know what he was trying to do. He's trying to help you. He can't hear it.
Speaker 2:So for me, when feedback comes in and it hurts me, the first thing that I try to do is separate the emotion, the guess about the intent, from the content. I immediately ask myself what is true about this? And if I can't find anything, then I go all right. What could be a tiny bit true about this, what could be true about this? And so I try to separate that way. I can't pretend I'm able to do it all the time, but I'd say I do it most of the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's important to pause and understand why you feel the way you feel when something is delivered to you and it hurts or it hits you hits you deep inside. I think, upon reflection, you can connect the dots as to where that's coming from. A lot of times it's a lot deeper than the surface level message that they're portraying towards you as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's funny you mentioned Tony Robbins. I actually nearly joined his mastermind that year because I had just toured with him for a while and I'd had. He'd been so good to me and he really really was extraordinarily generous with me and we spent a lot of personal time. I really was grateful for that time. And one day we had a little communication snafu and what had happened was that one of his people gave me some instructions about something they wanted me to do. I did the thing they wanted me to do. It wasn't what I was supposed to do and when it turned out, you know that it went wrong. The person didn't own up to what they had done. You know, to the, to the email they'd sent me.
Speaker 2:And so Tony was like very unhappy. He was like I can't believe this happened. He was very passionate about it. He's like Eric, if you wanted it to work out like that, you should have communicated with me. And I'm like oh, hold on, we're having a bit of a disagreement here. And I immediately remember what Tony Robbins always says. He says rapport, you got to make sure you get rapport. So I didn't go like calm down, calm down. I say Tony, I would be really annoyed about that too, if that's what happened. But luckily that isn't what happened. And then I showed him the email and he's like, oh, all right then. And immediately he took the feedback and he apologized. He was really clear. He's like, oh, total misunderstanding it was. You know, he is the kind of guy that can take that feedback from the right people around him and I would suggest it's one of the reasons he's so phenomenally successful.
Speaker 1:You responded in that way, at his tone and at his level. How useful is that in some cases? Do you think you need to read the person you're speaking to?
Speaker 2:You know, people like people that they're like and people like resonance. So it's funny that was the second time that happened between me and Tony. The very first time I went to go speak at an event of his, I was brought in as an emergency speaker because another speaker had sadly passed away. Good, I'm a good mutual friend of ours and I, on 11 days notice, I agreed to do this gig. I hadn't been on stage anywhere for three years like it. It wasn't the smartest, yes, I've ever done, but well, it turned out it was. But I got there and um, and and Tony didn't particularly want me to be there because he didn't know me, he didn didn't know what you know, but they needed a speaker to fill that slot. So he asked if he could meet me in the hallway and just to kind of get a sense of me. And we get out in the hallway and like he's pretty tall and he's like how do you feel about your presentation? And I was honest with him. I said well, you could be a lot more confident. Like I could see I had not said the right thing. And again, I've heard this expression many times but nobody in the history of calming down has ever calmed down because somebody told them to calm down. It just doesn't work. So once his temperature had gone up, trying to speak to him down here, he wouldn't be able to hear me.
Speaker 2:So I did the same thing that day. He goes well, you could be a lot more confident and I go. Oh, I'm plenty confident. I said I'm just telling you that it's not exactly the presentation you're looking for, but I think it's gonna be even better because you know why you guys have me, because none of they're business operators and I'm a business owner and that's why I was able to come on 11 days notice. So it might not be the talk you're expecting, but it's going to be the one you love and he goes well. All right, then you know, and? And so there's something about that report, and he teaches that there's something about rapport in communication. Obviously, you have to be careful, when somebody is anger angry that when you meet them at that level, that you're not escalating it further. Obviously, the idea is to meet them in a way that de-escalates it, and I would say that that is possible because he's a rational human being and he's open to feedback and because we were mutually respectful.
Speaker 1:When it comes to the workplace, do you think operating out of fear is efficient, Because some workplaces they tend to shout.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:How effective do you think shouting is in the workplace?
Speaker 2:I don't like it at all, not in the workplace, not in the family. You know, I it just.
Speaker 2:I think it's an inefficient way If you're saving somebody's life, you know like, don't run across the street right now, you know, okay, you need to get their attention, but shouting at somebody out of anger, there's no, I don't run across the street right now, you know, okay, you need to get their attention, but shouting at somebody out of anger, there, there's. No, I don't. I don't think. Matter of fact, the mutual friend of tony and mine was chet holmes. Chet was an incredible man. His daughter, amanda holmes, is now managing his business. She's a phenomenal woman.
Speaker 2:A funny sidebar I used to run these leadership programs where I took people up Kilimanjaro as part of the leadership program and she decided to join that trip, I think on two days notice, and flew to Africa and climbed Kilimanjaro with us, I think a mark of what an incredible woman she is and also what a great dad he was.
Speaker 2:And sadly, of course, you know, he passed away, but before he did, he and I were spending a lot of time together and he came to me at one point. He asked me if I would run, if I would consider running his business, and I was kind of in a situation where I was open to a new opportunity and he offered me phenomenal amounts of money and it was. It was nothing like I'd ever seen before in my life and and I thought about it. And then I sat down, had lunch with him and I go Chad, I can't, I can't take the job. And he goes you're perfect for it. Why wouldn't you take the job? And I go I've spent enough time with you in our friendship to know that you shout at people and he goes well sometimes. And I go yeah, and I said here's how it works. You could shout at me once and I would let that go, but if you shouted at me the second time, I would quit that moment and walk out the door. The money wouldn't be worth it to me.
Speaker 2:And he laughed and he goes. You know yourself really well and I go, yep, and he goes. And you know me too, and I go, yep, and he goes. I respect your decision. Now, it didn't change his policy about yelling at people, it was just, you know, one of his methods of communication. But I don't. I don't believe it's useful in running a business and it's not in parenting. And wow, I had a, I had a. As parents, I think we all have those moments where you wish you said something different and you know, you know you messed this up, and I think it's the condition of parents to second guess yourself and uh. But every now and again you get to do something right and you get to know you did.
Speaker 2:We were filming a bunch of uh videos at our house and, uh, you know, the whole house was turned into a studio and we took a break and we're out on the deck having lunch. We live in the Caribbean, so it's nice weather and we're just having a chat and my little girl, who was probably about five or six at the time, says she's going to go in and get herself some water. And I tell her be careful, there's lots of cables and lights and what have you. And so, of course, like a few minutes later, I suddenly hear the mother of all explosions. I mean, I don't know what happened, but glass explosion, something unbelievably horrible has happened inside the house. And immediately I'm worried about her and I'm thinking about the cameras that might have fallen on her or the lights that have crashed to the floor. And I jump up and I sprint into the house and there she is, standing on the floor and at her feet is one of our Wild Fit branded glass water bottles, and these are big bottles and she's obviously filled it to the brim and it slipped out of her hands and it's hit the floor, which is hard, and it's shattered, and there's glass and water everywhere and her eyes are like this big.
Speaker 2:And I heard in the back of my head, I heard my dad. I heard what he would have said and it wouldn't have been nice. He just wasn't nice about those and he would have shouted and and and said awful things. And I heard the words, I heard the swear words. I heard it echoing in the back of my head. It was such a strange experience. It's not my frame of reference for the way I would be at all and instead I just I turn to my little girl and I go baby, why did you use one of the big glass bottles?
Speaker 2:And she goes because I couldn't bring enough water for everybody in a cup my heart melted and I even felt guilty for asking the question, but thank God I didn't yell at her. If I had yelled at her, imagine the core belief she would have created with all this generosity of spirit. And then it smashes. And then I come in. No, and as soon as she told me that I got goosebumps all over my body, I picked her up in the biggest hug, carried her out of the glass and thanked her for being so generous. No, I don't think yelling is necessary or helpful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think it's useful either. I think working from a place of fear is just not effective. No, so when you were a kid as well, did you find then you were in a shouty household then, and did you have to shout to be heard. Yeah, I would say so um do you think your shouting days just were over as you grew into an adult?
Speaker 2:no, I actually know the moment they they went over. Um, my mom and I shouted we would have big bust up, shouting arguments and, uh, it was just the way we communicated. And, um, and I think that my dad also. You know, when he was angry he would certainly use very harsh language and loud volume and maybe that became a family pattern or something.
Speaker 2:Years later, I went to go work for an entrepreneur in Vancouver and when I started working with him, there were just the two of us and a part time woman working in the warehouse in the US. It was this tiny little startup company and as we were growing, we would often have difference of opinion, but I was the employee and he was the owner and sometimes I was right and sometimes I would stand my ground and I would stand toe to toe with him and we would shout, we would have shouting matches and at one point and, by the way, very often I dragged him, kicking and screaming, where he needed to get to to grow his business. I wanted to hire one of my friends as an assistant and I offered to pay the assistant salary myself. I mean, I was so committed that this was a good idea and I had to shout with him for weeks, like we were fighting for weeks about this, before he finally gave in and let me hire the guy. The guy ended up becoming one of our top salespeople. Then I wanted to hire another one of my best friends. Same process shouting, yelling, arguing, and finally he capitulated and guy became not only one of the best salespeople but became president of the company.
Speaker 2:So, you know, the fact is is that I was helping him, but it was the only model of communication that he and I had at that stage and at one point he held me aside and he goes you know, you can't shout at me like that, it's disrespectful, and so on and so forth. And he was right and and I thought a lot about it and, funny enough, I went to a Tony Robbins seminar in Mexico and we did this exercise around behavior modification and what have you. And I admitted to my group that I had this temper problem, like I was shouting and I I identified that it might've been a family pattern and so on. And we went through a really cool exercise, sort of, you know, neuro, neurolinguistic programming kind of a thing, and it was done Like it never happened again, like I went back to work and it never happened again.
Speaker 2:And I'll tell you that, while that was really good for me, it was terrible for him Because what he lost was somebody who was willing to go toe-to-toe with him when he was wrong. And he lost that in me and I think that was a tragic loss for him. But for my quality of life and my peace of mind it was much better and, by the way, it led to me leaving that company and starting my own business led to me leaving that company and starting my own business.
Speaker 1:What have you done to support your mental health? Because I feel like you seem healthy enough in the mind, because you're such a confident person. But what's going on inside that mind?
Speaker 2:The number one thing for mental health and I mean this the number one thing for mental health is physical health. It's the number one thing Hydrate, nourish, move your body. I have to tell you anybody who goes to a psychologist or a psychiatrist and they're starting to be prescribed medicine long before medicine is prescribed diet, exercise, water, sleep should be prescribed.
Speaker 1:Fix the basics first, before you even do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely you know one of the things we discovered with our WildFit program. We've had over I don't know 100, 100, 150,000 people around the world go through that program and all it is is a program that helps people change their relationship with food without ever going on a diet ever again. And of course people lose weight. Of course people reverse diseases like type two diabetes and inflammation. We get that all day long. But the third most common reported benefit of improving the relationship with food is an increased sense of well-being, which is broken into a bunch of subcategories my depression and anxiety over I'm off, my antidepressant meds, all that kind of stuff. Most of mental health is putting in the right fuel, not putting in so much toxin, getting enough sleep, being hydrated, having an. You know, that's it. It's amazing how resilient you become when you're healthy. Now you know. Beyond that, I think there are some important things. I meditate. I've been meditating since I was 12. I'm a huge fan of meditation.
Speaker 1:How the hell did you pick up meditation when you were 12?
Speaker 2:It's almost an embarrassing story. When I was a kid there was a TV series called the Six Million Dollar man and in one of the episodes episodes they had a guy on the show who could hold his breath like for 15 minutes and what have you. And the way they would it was science fiction. But the way they would show it is they'd have him in a water tank and they'd have the things on him to measure his heart and all this stuff. But then the camera would show what he was visualizing and he would visualize this calm lake surface and as long as the lake surface stayed calm, he could stay under the water and keep his pulse down and his heart rate down and he could hold his breath. And so I started doing meditations like that, where I would have this lake and I would go paddling on the lake and I would use what's called a war stroke. When you're paddling a canoe, normally you paddle and then lift the paddle out and put it back in, but then your paddle drips and makes noise. So a war stroke is where you paddle and turn the paddle back so it's feathered, and then you push it through the water without lifting it out. And I would in my meditations I would do these war strokes and I would. And I did that. You know I wouldn't have. I was 12. I wouldn't have called it meditations, my teacher would have probably called it daydreaming. But the fact is is that I was going into a really deep meditative state. Okay, but now I'm going to go a little esoteric on you. I'm not kidding you. I did that from the age of 12 and continue doing it.
Speaker 2:And at the age of 22, I was living in Vancouver, canada, and I bought my first ever new vehicle and I bought myself a Jeep, a proper Jeep Wrangler, and I went four by fouring in the mountains and fishing. And I'd heard about this one lake and it was like hidden up in the mountains somewhere and I they didn't have Google earth back then, you know so I had to go get logging maps, logging road maps, and I got those and I figured out where the lake was and I drove like four hours out of Vancouver, three hours into the forest on logging roads and I found this lake and I'm hiking up to the lake and it's uphill to the lake, which is unusual, you know. But I hike up to the lake and, as I can smell water and I crest and I come to the top of the lake. I'm telling you it was the same lake. The shape was identical, it was the same lake and I know that that's a little out there.
Speaker 2:But now the next part is insane. The canoe was there, like it was there. It's a different color, but it was there. This is the middle of nowhere. There are no humans for 500 miles around me. I don't know why there's a canoe there, but it's there, it was amazing.
Speaker 2:I got in the canoe, I grabbed the paddle and I paddled on the same lake that I'd been paddling on since I was 12 years old and to this day I still paddle on this lake and it is where I go for my deepest meditations and my you know deepest contemplations.
Speaker 1:What's your thoughts on therapy?
Speaker 2:Shorter is better. You know I'm not a big fan of you know like I'm going to talk about my problems all the time and rehash all that kind of stuff. I'm sure it has a place, it's just my experience has been that I'm a big fan of Viktor Frankl and his book Man's Search for Meaning to me might be the most important book on the human condition ever written. And his theory prior to his concentration camp experiences was that if a person could assess a functional meaning for any of the events in their life, that they'd be able to reconcile that or close the hindsight window, so to speak. And that has been my experience.
Speaker 2:I mean I wouldn't suggest that I ever do any kind of therapy, but I do coaching and some of that coaching crosses that line. I mean I'll have 500 people in a workshop and all of a sudden somebody's got the microphone in their hand and they're crying about the story that's been, you know, debilitating their life, and very often in a 20-minute conversation I can help them to release that story and move on with their lives. In our WildFit programs we have to do that. You know people have bad relationships with food for many, many reasons, but one of them is that you know they were hypnotized, like their parents accidentally hypnotized them that cookies are painkillers.
Speaker 2:Oh you feel you skin your knee, have a cookie, and not only is it a painkiller, but it comes with love and a hug. And you wonder why, 45 years old, you're at the store and buying groceries for the family, and buying a box, a little thing, of cookies and eating them all in the car before you get home. Well, because you were hypnotized, and so a big part of our job is to break that hypnosis and break those patterns for people.
Speaker 1:In your lifetime, have you had any strangers who've made a massive impact in your life?
Speaker 2:Many, I mean, but one above all, nona, the chief of the Hadza tribe that I visit with. I've been visiting them for 15 years and he is the stranger who's now an unbelievably good friend that has had maybe one of the most impactful influences on my life by far.
Speaker 1:And how is that?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, you know, I was introduced to an entirely different way of life. You know, these guys are living, hunting, gathering, just really truly living a life that is probably the closest representation we have to our history and that has taught me more about the human condition maybe than anything else has, and it's what inspired the book the Evolution Gap, it's what made me write it.
Speaker 1:I really want to read it Now, because it's called the Detached Podcast. What would you detach yourself away from? That's limiting you today? What would you?
Speaker 2:detach yourself away from that's limiting you today. You know, I think electronics. I've been very good about that. Some years ago my cell phone got stolen and I didn't replace it for six and a half months. I lived without a phone for six and a half months and it was amazing. Of course, these days our phones are even more integrated, so it's more challenging. But I really value times when I disappear off into nature or I simply disengage from electronics. I think that they're unbelievably valuable, but we are sacrificing our quality of life for them.
Speaker 1:And presence and I just want to say thank you so much for coming on to the podcast today. It's been a real pleasure.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me.