Inside Out with Jimi Hunt - The Mental Fitness Podcast

Death is inevitable. It’s one of life’s few certainties, and yet it is a topic that most of us shy away from discussing.

In this episode, Jimi and Libby talk about their own perspectives on death, their fears, their responses and how this has impacted their relationship together.

They discuss some of the unique practices that people around the world adopt to embrace the notion of death, including fake funerals, keeping skulls in your house and death meditations as well as psychological tools to help overcome death anxiety and cultivate death accpetance.

They also delve into how having a healthy attitude towards death - your own, or someone else’s - can boost enjoyment of other facets of your life and improve your overall mental fitness.

Have questions? Comments? Want to book Jimi to come and speak? Visit jimihunt.com

Instagram: @thejimihunt

Email: jimi at jimihunt dot com

Thanks for listening! We love that you’re here.

Links:

Nick Wignall

https://nickwignall.com/fear-of-death-and-death-anxiety/

Drs. Patricia Furer and John Walker - Book

https://www.booktopia.com.au/treating-health-anxiety-and-fear-of-death-patricia-furer/book/9781441922489.html

Deans doco: Korea's Fake Funerals

Returning to the podcast once again is one of Jimi’s favourite human beings of all time, the person who he credits as helping him make the very first moves up the mental fitness continuum, Dr John McEwen.

In this episode, they dive deep into the waters of grief.

Death is inevitable and grief can appear in many forms throughout our lives. It’s unavoidable, but are we handling it well as a society? And how do we move forward when we’re experiencing grief?

Jimi and John discuss how to move through grief in an active way, not letting it consume us or become part of our identity.

They offer effective, actionable steps to take to process grief and the feelings and emotions that come with it.

They talk about the difference between pain and suffering and how understanding that difference that can impact our ability to move through grief.

Believing that grief is a gift, John explains how to build on what grief teaches us, not wallowing in the emotion - as he so eloquently puts it:

“Let the grief educate the life.” 

“The active processing of pain is that we are dealing with it, and we’re confronting it and we're being honest with ourselves and with the pain.

Suffering is ‘oh, woe is me’. I think suffering is defined in terms of narcissism where we’re starting to get ‘secondary gain’ so rather than recovering, we’re getting, actually, a gain by being debilitated.”

Have questions? Comments? Want to book Jimi to come and speak? Visit jimihunt.com

Instagram: @thejimihunt

Email: jimi at jimihunt dot com

Thanks for listening! We love that you’re here.

Links: drstress.co.nz/

What are deal-breakers and why is knowing what yours are so important?

Join Jimi as he explains what deal-breakers are, how to identify yours, whether they be in your intimate relationships, friendships or even your work environment and how having a clear understanding of where you draw the line can benefit your mental fitness.

Using his own deal-breakers as an example, Jimi outlines some simple exercises that you can do to understand not only why we need deal-breakers, but also how they can help us identify what we truly value in life which leads to making better choices to help your life head in the direction that YOU choose and move you up the mental fitness continuum.

If you enjoyed today’s episode please consider leaving a review, subscribing or sharing it with a friend.

Have questions? Comments? Want to book Jimi to come and speak? Visitjimihunt.com

Instagram:@thejimihunt

Email: jimi at jimihunt dot com

Thanks for listening! We love that you’re here.

Recorded exactly ten years to the day after the BEST FIRST DATE EVER™️ today’s episode sees Jimi and Libby discussing the top 10 (+/-) things they have learned during their ten years together.

What lessons have they learned along the way? What is their top advice to others who want to foster fulfilling relationships? What does it take to have a healthy, mutually beneficial partnership?

Listen, to find out the answers and learn how to apply some of the lessons they have learned during their ten years together to make your own relationships bloom.

If you enjoyed today’s episode please consider leaving a review, subscribing or sharing it with a friend.

Have questions? Comments? Want to book Jimi to come and speak? Visit jimihunt.com

Instagram: @thejimihunt

Email: jimi at jimihunt dot com

Thanks for listening! We love that you’re here.

Dr Amy Silver joins Jimi as this week’s expert guest to talk about Fear. A psychologist specialising in helping people manage their emotions for high performance, Dr Amy has written an award-winning and best-selling book ‘The Loudest Guest - How to Control and Change your relationship with Fear’.

We can be courageous in some areas of our life but not in others. We all sit with a natural level of fear which may be helpful and keep us safe but some fear may be simply keeping us from moving forward.

In this 60 minute episode, they discuss the difference between necessary/healthy fear and the type of fear that stops us in our tracks.

As Amy sees it, there are two ways to manage fear; taking small, baby steps or big, giant leaps and throughout this episode she imparts a ton of excellent, practical advice on how to manage fear and helps us understand which approach to undertake in different situations.

They delve into how to have courageous conversations and Jimi tells Amy what his greatest fear is. He also talks about how he manages his smaller fears and why that helps his mental fitness.

If you enjoyed today’s episode please consider leaving a review, subscribing or sharing it with a friend.

Have questions? Comments? Want to book Jimi to come and speak? Visit jimihunt.com

Instagram: @thejimihunt

Email: jimi at jimihunt dot com

Thanks for listening! We love that you’re here.

Benchmarking your fitness is easy! We’re able to measure our physical fitness in a myriad of ways and there are countless options and apps available to input and analyse our health and fitness data. We can use this data to make informed decisions about how and where we want to go with our fitness journey…

But what about measuring and quantifying our mental fitness? What apps and resources exist to allow us insight into how we are functioning mentally and to allow us to track our progress up the mental fitness continuum?

In this episode, Jimi explains just why benchmarking our mental fitness progress is so important and he provides some useful tips and resources to help get you on the right track.

If you enjoyed today’s episode please consider leaving a review, subscribing or sharing it with a friend.

Have questions? Comments? Want to book Jimi to come and speak? Visit jimihunt.com

Instagram: @thejimihunt

Email: jimi at jimihunt dot com

Thanks for listening! We love that you’re here.

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NOTES:

Karen Nimmo’s Self-Test: Medium.com/KarenNimmosTest

Seeking growth as an individual can lead to some serious enrichment in any relationship and Jimi and Libby are back with another episode to get into what it means to grow together as a couple.

They talk about how they see their roles in each others’ growth, how their individual growth experiences shape their way forward together and they touch on how they navigate the not-so-pretty side of it all.

They also offer some sound advice on how to communicate within a relationship whether there is mutual growth or one person doing it alone and what to do if you don’t have a partner who is supportive of your growth and not interested in their own.

Sometimes it’s okay to grow apart, but if you’d like to learn how to grow together - this episode might hold some of the answers for you.

If you enjoyed today’s episode please consider leaving a review, subscribing or sharing it with a friend.

Have questions? Comments? Want to book Jimi to come and speak? Visit jimihunt.com

Instagram: @thejimihunt

Thanks for listening! We love that you’re here.

Jimi is joined once again by good friend and Human Performance Consultant, Nigel Beach to dig into grounding. Also known as Earthing, they discuss the science behind the practice and outline some of the profound systemic benefits of grounding and how it can improve our physical and mental fitness.

Calling it the single most effective modality that he has used for his health, Nigel draws from his personal experience and as well as the experiences of some of his clients including elite level athletes, to espouse the wide and significant physiological benefits of grounding while also explaining how simple it is to do.

They talk about some of the negative effects on our physiology when we are not grounded and how numerous studies have shown that approximately 95% of disease states and poor mental health states come from inflammation. Nigel explains why he approaches the prescription of grounding from an inflammation point of view when assessing and assisting his clients.

Listen to discover how doing something as simple as putting your bare feet onto the earth can have a massively beneficial impact on your overall wellbeing and find out some of Nigel’s top recommendations for how to incorporate grounding into your own mental fitness toolbox.

If you enjoyed today’s episode please consider leaving a review or sharing it with a friend.

Have questions? Comments? Want to book Jimi to come and speak? Visit jimihunt.com

Instagram @thejimihunt        Email [email protected]

Thanks for listening! We love that you’re here.

EPISODE LINKS:

Nigel's preferred grounding mat for sleep:

Clint Ober https://www.ultimatelongevity.com/earthing-grounding/clint-ober.shtml

Study: Penn State University

https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/electrical-grounding-technique-may-improve-health-outcomes-nicu-babies/

Blood Test Nigel mentions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q31UfsdKdhc

Jimi always wanted to be the smartest person in the room. Thinking that being intelligent was the key to being liked and respected, Jimi pursued learning ALL OF THE THINGS but over time, came me to realise that being smart isn’t the be all and end all and that, in fact, developing wisdom is the key to moving up the mental fitness continuum and living a mentally fitter life.

Chatting with Libby, Jimi explores what exactly it means to be wise and imparts some of his own wisdom on the subject.

The good news is, you don’t have to memorise the entire set of questions in a Trivial Pursuit game (as Jimi has discovered first-hand) but by trying out some of the fourteen different ways that you can become wiser that Jimi outlines in this episode you might be on your way to wearing a loin cloth at the top of a mountain.

If you enjoyed today’s episode please consider leaving a review.

Have questions? Comments? Want to book Jimi to come and speak? Visit jimihunt.com

Instagram @thejimihunt Email [email protected]

Thanks for listening! We love that you’re here.

Every journey starts somewhere, for Jimi, his search for universal truths started on a sand bank in NZ's longest river because five women had told him he would end up there. 

This story is the catalyst for Jimi's Mental Fitness journey. The lessons learned here opened him up to a much bigger world than he ever imagined. Hopefully these lessons may help you along your journey as well...

LINKS:

Lilo Doco

Lilo Book

Jimi's Instagram