If today was your last day, how would you live it differently?

One of the biggest lies we tell ourselves is that we have all the time in the world. The truth is, we don’t know how long we’re going to be here for. We gear ourselves up to live long lives with mortgages and preparations for the future but sometimes we protect our lives so much that we don’t actually live.

This episode is a challenge for you to look at the quality of your life right now.

Are you really living the life that you want to live? Or has the assumption that you’ll live a long life stopped you from embracing joy, peace, pleasure and fulfillment in the present moment?

Do you want to live a long life?

Or do you want to live a quality life?

LINKS:

Books mentioned:

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

The Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware

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My website: https://manfulness.com.au/

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Journaling is an incredibly useful tool that has helped me immensely throughout my life to build an understanding and dialogue with my thoughts and feelings.

In this episode, I share my story of how I began my journaling journey. I had to move past the belief that women are the only ones that can journal. I gave myself the freedom to write whatever was inside my head without any structure and it allowed me to begin this dialogue with my emotions and thoughts.

I share my three uses for journaling which include developing an understanding of who I am and why I feel that way (including triggers), writing down quotes and affirmations that made me feel better and drawing.

We, as men, are not given the opportunity to explore emotions. Society views that men should always be strong and emotions are weak, causing us to lose the dialogue with our feelings. This then leads to emotions building up pressure over time, resulting in anger and frustration over small issues. Journaling enabled me to take control over my internal world and have an outlet for these thoughts and feelings.

Give journal writing a go and find your own perfect environment for personal reflection.

LINKS:

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My website: https://manfulness.com.au/

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There are a bunch of hot topics in the world at the moment and along with that comes a lot of division. We all approach issues from a different perspective and form opinions based on our personal biases, judgements, assumptions and life experiences.

It’s easy to hold onto our opinions as truths. But when we only listen to our opinions, we miss out on opportunities for greater knowledge, understanding and growth. It becomes “us and them” instead of moving forward together as a society.

In this episode, I talk about the importance of growing in empathy, how this requires us to be more accountable with our opinions, understand people who share different views and be flexible to change our own.

LINKS:

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In Melbourne, we have recently re-surfaced from our fifth lockdown and I feel that this one has hit me the hardest.

I had to cancel my 40th birthday party and the Manfulness Masterclass, and I feel frustration and irritability confined to my home.

This stasis of isolation can bring on many different emotions for people and they can be challenging to handle as the lockdown is out of our control.

In this episode, I examine the feelings that are generated from being in lockdown and how media outlets are using these feelings to consume our attention.

Fear draws us in and fine tunes our senses, so when we are bombarded with news programs, press conferences, and social media posts, we are stuck in a cycle of dread and negative energy.

I will talk to you through my strategy of disengaging from news programs and social media posts to disconnect from the onslaught of constant fear to give yourself the opportunity to recentre and come back into homeostasis. Use laughter as an important tool to clear your body of stagnant energy and improve your mental health.

Bring your level of consciousness and awareness to what you are viewing and it will bring an incredible difference to your health and wellbeing.

LINKS:

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I’m about to turn 40, which feels like a pretty big milestone for me. I’ve been reminiscing about the last 10 years of my life; how much has changed and how much I’ve grown. I wanted to share my reflections with you as I unpack a few of the lessons I’ve learned and things I’ve journeyed through over the last decade.

I look back at 30 year old me and feel so grateful for that man who said yes to embarking on the journey into the unknown. I faced some real challenges and painful moments, but they all led me to this place of deeper authenticity and greater joy and fulfillment.

If you’re struggling right now or facing something really challenging, I hope this episode is an encouragement to you to hold on. If you could have the perspective of hindsight, you would know that whatever you’re going through right now, your suffering isn’t in vain. Embrace where you’re at, find the greater purpose inside the suffering and use it for your transformation.

LINKS:

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It has just ticked over to a new financial year here, and I find this is a great opportunity to really reflect on the past 12 months in business.

When I look back at all that Erika and I have achieved in our businesses this year, I feel grateful and proud of what we’ve been able to do.

We’ve grown so much not only professionally, but personally and when I think about how the end of financial year used to feel for me, there has been such a shift in my mindset.

When I was first starting out in the fitness industry, I was really struggling financially. My gym wasn’t making money year after year, and I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. I was tired all the time, stressed beyond belief and everything felt really hard.

I realised that I wasn’t being honest with myself. I wasn’t really looking at the numbers and the reality of where my business was sitting.

Once I started being honest about the situation, I could finally start to turn it around.

This isn’t just something that applies to your finances either. It applies to everything in your life.

If you are truly honest with yourself and the situation that you’re in, coming to it with an open mind, you can make positive changes.

LINKS:

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My life completely changed when I started getting deep into personal development. I began unravelling the unconscious habits and patterns in my life, I worked through painful realisations and started taking responsibility for where I was at. Then I had the audacity to tell everyone else what they should be doing to change their lives too.

I see a lot of people doing the same thing lately. When you start doing the work and bringing awareness to the darker areas of your life, it’s a natural temptation to want to preach positive thinking and gratitude to everyone else. But no amount of positive thinking will ever heal trauma in someone’s life. That requires much deeper work.

In this episode I want to share with you some of the journey I went through and how I eventually realised that it wasn’t my job to tell someone else how to change their life. I share my thoughts on toxic positivity and why it will never replace the deeper, and often challenging, work when it comes to healing trauma. I also talk about what a good coach should do in supporting you in your personal journey.

LINKS:

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In today’s episode I’m going to tackle a taboo topic: porn addiction.

Pornography can be a difficult area for men to traverse because it’s something we’re incredibly shameful of. Most men don’t even want to admit they view porn. It’s also a common thing for men to struggle with, especially in our younger years when feelings of arousal are high but our understanding of sexuality hasn’t fully developed. It’s an easy way to deal with built up sexual energy but also boredom, frustration, and other negative emotions.

Society as a whole can view men as being driven to sex from a purely animalistic level. This mentality has become so ingrained that many men view themselves this way and perpetuate it in their own lives. Because of this, many men miss out on love and sex at their optimal levels, which is really tragic. Porn makes this problem even worse as it gives us a very mechanical, emotionless portrayal of what sex is.

We need to overcome the shame and the guilt in this area so we can reach out for help and begin improving our lives. Take a few steps back and look at your life as a whole. Are you bored? Do you lack creative outlets? Are you nervous?

LINKS:

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I try to be purposeful with the guests who come on the Manfulness podcast. The men I look for are doing something different, who are courageous and sharing parts of themselves that are usually hidden. People who role model a different way that manhood can express itself. Today’s guest Christian O’Connel is definitely one of those men. He’s recently released a book “No One Listens to Your Dad’s Show” that explores his career in radio and shares some deeper parts of his life.

He talks to me about his family’s recent shift to the other side of the world. What led up to that, what struggles it caused, and how he feels in hindsight. We discuss how parenting has forced him to reassess his perspectives and just hold space for his daughters. Christian is equal parts hilarious and honest, which made this conversation a delight. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I did.

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I’ve had many men come to me in sessions who want to improve their life but have no experience working on themselves. It’s a harmful block that prevents many people from reaching the life they desire. We all face challenges in our lives that shape us but the outlook we hold determines how much control we can take over our own lives.

People tend to fall into one of two main mindsets here. One mindset believes they have no power to change the things that happen to them and that they are how they are because of the inevitable . The other mindset acknowledges that  things happen in life they have no control over, but also that they can choose how to show up in life regardless. You cannot begin to work on yourself if you are stuck in the first mindset, you need to be open and willing to change.

I’ve dealt with it myself, which is how I know just how worth it the work will be. In today’s episode I’ll talk about where to start when you want to work on yourself.

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