Forging Resilience

46 Sam Smith: Living Nudge to Nudge.

• Aaron Hill • Season 2 • Episode 46

Share episode

Send us a text

This episode explores the concept of "living nudge to nudge" with Sam Smith, who discusses his transformation from a professional athlete to a coach focused on inner wisdom. Themes of self-discovery, intuition, and parenting are woven throughout, emphasising the importance of trusting our instincts and modelling self-love for the next generation.

• Discussion on the pressures of following a fixed plan
• Personal journey of transitioning from professional rugby to coaching
• Importance of listening to and acting on inner nudges
• Creating conditions for insight and intuition
• Parenting approach focused on modelling healthy self-worth
• Conversations around faith and trusting gut instincts
• The significance of vulnerability in personal growth
• Exploration of the Crazy Life Exercise and its impact

Get in touch with Sam on:

LinkedIn


_______________________________________________________________________

If you found value in today’s episode, it would mean the world if you could take a moment to leave us a review.

Your feedback helps us grow and reach more people looking to build their own resilience.

And don’t forget to hit that like and subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

Follow my social media accounts | LinkedIn | Instagram |

Click here for my monthly newsletter, mix of insights, reflections and questions. To share with other driven people like you, for your own insights and application.




Speaker 1:

Welcome to Forging Resilience. Exploring for a different perspective on strength and leadership, Join me as we discuss experiences and stories with guests to help gain fresh insights around challenge, success and leadership. Sam Smith, welcome to Forging Resilience, mate.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for having me, Aaron. I'm looking forward to speaking today. Thanks for having me, Aaron.

Speaker 1:

I'm looking forward to speaking today, likewise, buddy. So yesterday I sent Sam a quick email just to say to check with us on the platform and a couple of other little points, if there's anything you want to focus on, and Sam replied saying, yeah, that he's writing a book at the moment about living nudge to nudge. So it'd be interesting for him to hear my experience of what happens when I have faith to listen to my inner wisdom, wisdom and courage, and, and so I threw out the script a little bit. Normally I go on and and look at a bit about you, sam. Um, I've not done that.

Speaker 1:

I've seen your work and I've just got two things written down today, he says, holding up a piece of paper, your name. So I know who I've spoken to, um, and insight and intuition, um, and from there, buddy, let's let this conversation flow from there. So thank you for the email, thank you for the nudge I'm living into that, um, it's a pleasure to have you on today. I'm looking forward to learning from you, mate, being with you, um, and learning a bit more about the work you do and the man that you are in this world. So thanks for being here, mate.

Speaker 2:

Cool and thanks for having me, and I love that we're starting with a nudge. I think that the most beautiful moments in my life have been born out of listening to my own wisdom and taking action when I didn't know what the outcome would be or when it didn't make sense. And I've become obsessed with it this year in the work that I do that when me and the client get out of the client's way in the coaching sessions in their life, that magic just starts to unfold from that space and in ways that we never could have tried to manipulate or bring about or think about. And, yeah, just really living in the question of what would life look like if we just took our hands off the reins and allowed what wanted to emerge to emerge?

Speaker 1:

yeah, love it. That's fascinating topic, mate, and and yeah, this is why, for me, I'd love to give an introduction so people understand you, but I think that will become um apparent through this conversation, so I don't feel the need to do that right in this moment. But, but, sam, what does living nudge to nudge mean to you at this moment in time, buddy, and what inspired you to write a book on that?

Speaker 2:

I think that the last two or three years I've just been listening more and more and more to those nudges inside that point me in directions. Directions tell me not to do something. To do something. Um, a face will flash up from my past for no apparent reason and I'll call that person and then it makes total sense as soon as we start speaking, and the more I listen and the more I act.

Speaker 2:

I think it's a two-part, two-part practice really is. One is creating the inner landscape where you're able to be still enough and quiet enough to notice. And then the second piece is being courageous enough to take action yeah, without necessarily knowing why you are, or trusting, needing to trust, in just the process of letting it unfold. And we're obsessed in our world about having a plan and a strategy and knowing where we're going to be in five years, ten years. And the more I experience my life, the more I realize that all of that is bollocks and we have no idea where we're going to be in five years, ten years. And really that's just our ego, trying to make sense of the world and create a sense of security and safety. But it's, it's essentially built on a foundation of nothing.

Speaker 2:

And for me. My experience is that my life becomes more and more magical, more fun, more alive I, the more that I let go of trying to get myself somewhere and start just experiencing where I am and I feel. For me, it's felt like a courageous act to start bringing that more and more to my coaching clients, because people come to me with a really clear idea of where they want to be at the end of our work together and there is a massive part in me that's going well. We need to make sure we hit the goals that they set at the start and I'm trusting more and more that, as that relationship unfolds, the work we do unfolds. Rarely are my clients ending up where they thought they would be, but if if I were to ask them, are you happy with where you are or where you wanted to be? It would always be where they've ended up. It's way better than what we can think up with our brain yeah, yeah, I love that mate.

Speaker 1:

When so when. When was this idea or what was life like for you before you started living?

Speaker 2:

uh, into your insights then, or from nudge to nudge um, so I, from a young age, I had a plan. I wanted to be a professional rugby player from the age of 13 and everything in my life became about making that happen. And it did happen. I played at Harlequins and then at Worcester and then the plan didn't go to plan because I got injured at 26 and I had to finish playing. I'm 34 now, so most of my peers are sort of coming to the end of their careers at this kind of time.

Speaker 2:

And yeah, I say it at the beginning of the book which I have only just started writing, but there are some words on paper. I talk about how having a plan nearly killed me. Where I talk about how having a plan nearly killed me and my rugby career and then post-rugby, when I started my business, was just marred with depression and moments of wanting to end my life. And to me that's not a life well lived like. To me that's not a life well lived. That's not like being so rigidly tied to an identity and a structure and a way of living and a plan just made my capacity to experience life positively almost impossible. And my sense is that so many of us in this world are living like that, stuck inside of a life that we created because we thought it was something that we should do or we're expected to do, and we're becoming really masterful at building our own prisons and then not knowing what on earth to do to get out of them yeah, yeah, there's a couple of interesting things you've said there, mate and um.

Speaker 1:

One is a. I did a podcast recording with a, an adventurer called ollie, france, a couple of weeks ago, and the phrase that I took from from our conversation was that you, in his example, he's like he went halfway around the world to do this um, challenge um, and found himself stuck inside his head, and it was really interesting to watch that dynamic unfold over many, many hours at the first part of this adventure on a bike and to be in this incredible wilderness, but still between his two ears, which is something that came to me, and I love what you said about a plan almost killing you and really relates. And I've got a story it was one that I talk about which is something that came to me, and I love what you said about a plan almost killing you and really relates. And I've got a story. It was one that I talk about and maybe we'll talk about it, maybe we won't, it doesn't really matter, but I can definitely relate to that, mate.

Speaker 1:

Um, so what was your? What was the spark that helped you seek change then, sam, after, after injury, in terms of the depression that you talked about?

Speaker 2:

um. So when I was injured, I started a coffee shop, um, and I went head head first into building that as quickly as I could. When I look back on it, my, my self-worth and identity was so much, sam the rugby player, that when I was knew that that was coming to an end because of injury, I was so afraid of being forgotten or being worthless or not being someone that people were interested in because of what I was up to, that I now know, like reflecting on it, that subconsciously I was like, oh, entrepreneurship, that's valued in society, I'll become one of those. And so I built this business for all the wrong reasons and I thought, like many of us do, that when it got to a certain size it would. I would feel whole and complete and at ease and finally love myself and feel good enough. And that obviously never happened. So I kept growing it and growing it and growing it and eventually, sort of in this post, post rugby, the, I was just using I was either working, drinking or taking drugs as a way of just escaping from myself, because I couldn't be with myself emotionally, I couldn't cope with what I was experiencing and those were my three ways of getting out of my life and just taking a break from it, and you ask about the kind of spark of the moment.

Speaker 2:

I feel incredibly fortunate that one of my regular customers was a, or is a, life coach and a therapist, and he's an incredible man named Hugh, and one day couple of 2018, two years after I started the shop, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, sam, I think we need to go for a coffee, and I shrugged him off. I knew what he was getting at and I tried to. I tried to do what I did, which was pretend that everything was fine and but he was persistent and I'm very grateful that he was getting at and I tried to. I tried to do what I did, which was pretend that everything was fine, but he was persistent and I'm very grateful that he was and we ended up working together and that was the catalyst that helped me turn my life not even 180 further than that awesome, awesome.

Speaker 1:

You talk about um, the love, or for you. Then, sam, was there a berating that you referred to there? Was that almost loathing, or just like aspirational, but so driven to get yourself there, that, in that gap, that's where that disconnect came from? That's where that disconnect came from? Or was there always a voice of you that was no matter what you did or where you were? That was constant, not good enough, self-worth being challenged.

Speaker 2:

So I think in the moment, if you'd asked me that question, I would have said it was about wanting to be better and improve and grow and be a better rugby player or a better businessman. But if I were to be completely honest, it was from a place of self-hatred and self-loathing and a deep-rooted belief that I wasn't good enough, and I think that I was looking to all of these external accolades to try and make myself feel good enough. I thought that I was broken and these things would fix me when I reached a certain level in sport or in business, that all of a sudden everything was slotted into place and I'd feel okay and feel at ease and feel comfortable in my own skin. And I obviously now know that's never going to happen. And I now come from the belief that we're all perfect, whole and complete. We're born that way and we remain that way our whole life.

Speaker 2:

But what happens is we get wrapped up in stories and beliefs and what we think are truths and we forget that we're perfect, whole and complete and we act from a place as if we're not. Told and complete and we act from a place as if we're not. And so I see that the work that I'm I'm doing on myself and do with others is is. It's a, it's a rejection of the idea that we're looking for stuff outside of ourself to feel a certain way, and it's a. It's a coming home, it's a remembering remembering what we've forgotten and it's a sort of scraping away and peeling away of all of the stories that we're living inside of and realizing what, what is kind of more true underneath all of that yeah, something I I really enjoy the way that you talk and the videos that I've listened to of yours and the writing that I see, and something that I like to do as well.

Speaker 1:

I think it's partly for myself, but also for people that can't quite grasp those concepts yet. Not simplify it, but but to help them understand that. So if I, if I take the belittling voice that shows up sometimes in my life, still that did for a long time ago. For a long time, it wasn't crushing, although it used in certain moments it was. It was just, it was just a norm, it was just a flatness and emptiness. Uh, yeah, like you said, when this happens, then I'll feel that. So for you, does that still show up, sam, that you have to remind yourself that you're whole and complete, and what does that sort of dialogue look like internally for you now, mate?

Speaker 2:

So I think first I'll I'll probably deepen the context of perfect, whole and complete. So the analogy that I use, which I learned from my friend Callum, is that when we're born, when you look at a newborn baby, so many people will have looked at a newborn baby and said something along the lines of oh my God, they're perfect. It's a very common thing to say about a baby, or that kind of sentiment, and I say that because that baby's not doing anything in order to be perfect, it simply is breathing and alive. And if that's how we enter the world, and then we then skip to how we leave the world, if I'm looking after thankfully my parents aren't in a nursing home, but if I were to be looking after my dad in the nursing home, I wouldn't be looking at him and go you're less worthy than when you were 30 and you were bringing me up as a baby. For me, he's not less worthy as a human because I would be looking after him in a nursing home or he has people looking after him in a nursing home. So for me, with this concept, if both of those are true, then it has to also run true between but what takes us away or distorts our image of that is the stories that I'm not good enough from parents or teachers or school that we kind of pick up along the way and then to kind of come back to your point around, the inner critic, or that voice that we have in our head, is all of these ideas that we're not good enough, we don't know what we're talking about. When I get the promotion, then people will respect me.

Speaker 2:

All of those ideas are just thoughts. And when you can see that, that they are just a thought, that they're not real, they're not true, you can start to just remind yourself that, ah, there's that voice in my head that does that thing again and remind yourself that it's not true. What makes it true is when we grab onto the thought and we go, oh yeah, that that feels true and that sounds true, and then we make it true because we identify with it. We kind of put it in our backpack and take it with us for the rest of our life and then we then live into that possibility. So the language that we use creates our experience of life.

Speaker 2:

So if I'm saying to myself or the thought in my head is that I'm not good enough and I go, yeah, that's true. Then my filter for life is to look for all the areas where I'm not good enough, all the proof to back up the thought. And so the first step is knowing that it's just a thought and it's not real, it's not true, it's not you. And then the second step is just to like, when I, when, when that voice comes to me which it does a lot, I, I do just try to like, make light of it and laugh like, ah, there's that part of me that's trying to put me down again, that's trying to keep me small, and I just see it.

Speaker 2:

And then I leave it and laugh like, ah, there's that part of me that's trying to put me down again, that's trying to keep me small, and I just see it, and then I leave it and I put it to the side. I don't try and prove it wrong, I don't try and have an argument with it, because I don't know about you, but I've never won an argument in my head no no, and so just seeing it for what it is, it's just a thought.

Speaker 2:

I can leave it, I can let it carry on through my mind and eventually it will come out the other side yeah, separation.

Speaker 1:

I heard a great analogy which really works for me and talk to my clients about as well, as it's that we're on the bank of a river and watching the river flow by, which is our thoughts. Yes, if we allow them, they come and go, but so often I find myself being a human in the river trying to hold them back or fight them or stop that flow, which is impossible, and at this time of year, rivers are quite cold. So, yeah, the lesson for me is, yeah, to remind myself that I can step out of the river anytime.

Speaker 1:

Just as I can step into it, which helps me separate that. Sam, I know you're a father mate. What sort of things do you do to help your sons or to create those conditions for your sons to, to remind them that they're enough?

Speaker 2:

for me, the the most important thing in my parenting is to embody what I believe and to model that and to be it, because I I think and believe that kids do do what they see, not what we tell them. So if my boys see me or hear me speaking to myself in a way that is disparaging or unhelpful, then they're going to see that that's something that dad does and probably going to copy it. Or when it happens in their brain they go oh, that's something dad has, that, so that's normal. I think that so often we think that we just need to tell kids what they need to think and believe and do, but the power is in living it and then bringing them with you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, my interpretation of that for myself is to just let them be.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yeah, there's a man from india called sad guru and I remember listening to a reel of his a while ago where he spoke about parenting and he um, he says you don't raise children. He said who's more joyful you or the? And he said be led by your children, let them raise you. Raise you to the point where, when you're the most joyful person in the room, they will want to naturally follow you. And it was such a powerful thing for me to hear that to be the best father I can be is to just not selfishly focus on me, but bring the best of me out into the world and share that with my kids, because they're constantly bringing their best out to the world. That's the only way they know to be. My boys are five and four. They're not stuck in stories of I work this out, I don't know enough, there's a risk to this. They're just out there living and making stuff happen and knowing that a failure isn't a failure.

Speaker 1:

it's just a bit of information to take and learn from and go again yeah, yeah, I think that's one of the biggest things for me personally is it gives me the courage to learn more about my stuff and to step into those dark places. It is just that to peel back the layers of who I am, which, which, which will help them when I just yeah, in, in, in, in my presence here. By default, they will. They will see that or feel the benefit. Yeah, by default they will. They will see that or feel the benefit.

Speaker 1:

There's no doubt that some of my the heaviest things that I've carried, but also the lightest moments that I've lived, has been, yeah, around my kids and and helping them be more them by learning to be more me.

Speaker 1:

It's con, it's constant, and with my daughter at the moment, yeah, I, I can even feel this tension coming up in my jaws now over the last few days of constantly be challenged and by her. She's, she's eight, she's incredibly determined, she's incredibly confident, and it challenges me. It makes me, as a man, feel not heard. When I feel not heard, which I've learned recently about myself, I assume I'm not loved and that that's a story that runs really quite deep. I know that's not true, but it runs deep, and so this tension comes from this internal dialogue of, yeah, trying to model a different way, explain how I'm feeling, but also teach her rather than scare her into being what I think she should or shouldn't be. So it's a fascinating um part of my journey that I'm on and yeah, so thanks for that, mate. As a dad, I'm taking those two points away straight away.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it sounds like she's a brilliant teacher.

Speaker 1:

Incredible, incredible. And as I reflect back when she was three and four and used to spend 10, 15, 20 minutes trying to do up her shoelaces, it's me that's worried about us being late, not that incredible intuition or that instinct to I can do this, and what I'm doing, in effect, is extinguishing that with being worried about what it, what other people think if I'm late to school, for example, which goes back to that point of why I want to learn about myself and how I can show up. Sam, talk to us about your own faith, like you put in your email. What happens when you have faith for your own inner wisdom and courage? What sort of things do you, do you experience in business, at home, in your relationships, when you have that?

Speaker 2:

something that I often speak to clients about is, or ask them is has your, has your wisdom, has your gut instinct, your heart longing, has it ever been wrong? And I'm yet to hear someone respond going, yeah, it was wrong. What we maybe get wrong is whether or not we listen to it, and I think most people can think back to relationships that they knew they never should have entered into in the first place. There was that not quite right feeling, but we kind of post-rationalize it with our brain and make it all make sense and step in or the job or the business opportunity or the business partner, and I think for me, the faith piece is the hardest part. It's faith in the unknown of is this the gut instinct that's going to be the wrong one? Or trying to work out. Sometimes my ego can be really clever and it can make it feel like it's a gut instinct or a nudge, and really learning through trial and error to notice what's real and what's not.

Speaker 2:

Um, but what it looks like when I, when I listen is is, like I said to you earlier, that some recently someone's face popped up. I hadn't spoken to them for 10 plus years and I just called them. I don't know why I was calling them and as soon as they answered they were like oh my goodness, it's so mad you've called. I've been writing you an email for six months about wanting to work with you but I've haven't been able to send it and we just opened this beautiful conversation and that there's no logical reason why someone's face popped up, but it. But I trust that that's stuff that's coming through me.

Speaker 2:

Um, in coaching conversations it looks like well, it feels like for me, it feels like a question will come through the floor, through my feet, and it will get basically usually to my neck, and I feel like I'm about to speak it. And then my brain goes you can't fucking say that that's way too direct, or that doesn't make sense in context as to what you guys are speaking about, or it's not socially acceptable to ask something like that, or what if they don't like you asking this and they want to stop working with you? All those fear responses. And then what I've learned is that I then have a choice as to whether I listen to the fear and the thoughts which again aren't real, they're just thoughts or do I speak what is intuitively coming through me and when I speak it when I'm brave enough to speak it nine times out of ten. That question is what opens up the whole coaching, like whole engagement, let alone that conversation, and it makes possible something that wasn't possible 30 seconds before.

Speaker 1:

Yeah I'm also getting the impression that that's practice. Isn't it starting with small small things on a frequently to be able to listen to the bigger insights? That the one lightning bolt doesn't just arrive from the sky and everything's fine, there's a continual stream, I guess?

Speaker 2:

yeah, I think that's a really good point. I think it's on big stuff and little stuff, um. But yeah, I have it a lot with people who who know they need to have a conversation with their husband or wife because the marriage is on the rocks, but they know intuitively that it needs to happen, but they're so scared about what the outcome might be that they aren't listening to their gut. Yeah, but all that happens is they start to you start to rot in the inside is my experience of it Because there's this thing that you know needs to happen but you're not willing to make it happen.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I think for me that that feels like what I used to call a dull sense of disappointment in myself, just, but it's really subtle, really subtle in the pit of my stomach. Yeah, it only ever come when it's quiet, and I thought everybody has that. I think that leads us nicely on to the next sort of question, sam, something you talked about earlier, but the conditions. What are some of the things that you do or that we we might do do in terms of helping ourselves set up those conditions for insight or to hear more of our own intuition?

Speaker 2:

I think ultimately it looks like slowing down and across the board it's not just about sitting and meditating for 15 minutes once a day and all of a sudden you're going to have this rain of incoming insights. I think it's about living in a way where you're finding just more stillness more regularly. So it might look like disconnected walks, where you're going for a walk without your phone, without music, exercising without being connected and plugged in journaling. I have a practice where I ask my inner wisdom a question at the beginning of a journaling prompt and then I just start writing and see what comes back. And it's a fascinating process because often what I think my brain thinks I'm going to start writing, I write something completely different.

Speaker 1:

Brilliant. That's something I learned this summer being in the mountains. I took a good chunk of time off over summer and, yeah, my biggest insights came from early morning or late afternoon walks in the hills. It's incredible, yeah, to be connected to nature again. I feel more connected and things just bubble up.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, a magical place to be. So I try to plan I'm just catching my words because we're talking about earlier to structure it, not necessarily for insight but for that space, so that I know at this time this week I'm going to be riding my bike for three hours, not not for an outcome but just to be, yeah, creating those conditions there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I think that's key. I think, yeah, creating the conditions, living a life where there is regular stillness and space, and exactly that.

Speaker 1:

Not doing it for an insight or for an outcome, just doing it because you're doing it, because stillness and quiet and space is important for us yeah, I think it'd be rude not to mention, mate, that a couple of months ago, back in the summer, you sent an email on your email list, uh, on exercise that you've been doing with clients. Um, if I remember that it's not, wouldn't it be cool, if do you remember when, dot dot dot and to send you 10 items of um? Yeah, do you remember that time? When do you remember this question, sam?

Speaker 2:

yeah, yeah, it's um. I remember when this crazy thing happened.

Speaker 1:

There you go, thank you, yeah, yeah, when this crazy thing happened. So I feel compelled to tell you, mate, since I did that exercise and I haven't gone back in to look what I wrote. I know there's some financial things in there, but there's also an emotional part about learning to be more me, more authentic, um, and and talking about courage, and that has happened. Since the summer, lots of things have happened, um, but one of the biggest things is I feel like I've grown in love. My capacity to love myself and the people close to me has grown.

Speaker 1:

As a man of 45 who's had a career in a certain um sector that's not, maybe, maybe, as emotionally in touch. That means a lot of releasing stuff, a lot of weeping, mainly tears of joy, but they're melting, um. But I thought I wanted to tell you that publicly, mate, um, to say thank you for those questions and that, that, that nudge, um, and that, yeah, so many people have helped me and appeared on my journey to live into that and learn about myself. So, yeah, thank you. Thank you for that email, mate no, you're welcome.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for sharing. I've got a massive smile on my face. I'd love to hear what sort of openings happened around loving yourself and loving others more. What did you start to notice, having written it down?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I think this is an ongoing thing and it wasn't necessarily self-loathing. It was a belief that I wasn't good enough, so I had to do A, b and C to earn that. And just in the last month, my mentor and my coach have helped remind me that I can create those conditions for myself wherever I am me, that I can create those conditions for myself wherever I am. Um, yeah, which has been, which has been massive, which has been massive.

Speaker 1:

So it's all interlinked, like you say yeah, that's beautiful, and I think once you start to build that capacity to love yourself, it can't help but spill over to everyone else around you, like it has to it has to 100 and and I know that, and I know that because I can walk to school and I'll, just as an example, I won't be in my phone, I'll be head up looking around I can acknowledge people, I can hug the old dad, that dad that hugs me every now, and then you know and say, hi, remember people's names. It's the small things, yeah, it's the small things. We never really know what sort of seed it plants in other people or how it lifts their day. That's my takeaway from that. But, yeah, I completely agree, mate. It can't help but overflow. So it means, yeah, at home with my kids, I show up differently.

Speaker 1:

I can challenge that story that wants to shout and, um, scare them into behaving a certain way, just because I don't know what to do with my own feelings there. If we to go back to that question sam, I don't want to talk too much, mate, I'm away, um, I've got you here today to to learn from you, buddy um, if we go back to that question, I remember, do you remember when that crazy thing happened? Is that, is there something that you could share with us around that, mate, or that or that, that one of the thing that sticks out in your mind from from that question. Having done that work, so I first.

Speaker 2:

I first did that as a workshop in spain on a retreat and we did it as a story circle, so we were all sat in a circle, but we did it from the future, so we just took it in turns. To finish that sentence, I remember when this crazy thing happened and the only rule was that you had to speak about it as if it had already happened, but from the future. And it was such a cool half an hour, 40 minutes because as one person went a bit bigger and more audacious and out there it kind of lifted the bar of how big people were kind of speaking and I remember I let it out. And the one that came to me was that I remember when this crazy thing happened and I built a life where I could take every fifth year off, starting in five years' time, to just be around my family and support them in whatever stage of life they were in, and I'd never known that that was something I wanted.

Speaker 2:

But what the exercise does, I think, is that by just using the word crazy, it like takes away all of our conditioning around what might be possible and is that actually achievable or am being unrealistic, and it actually allows us to be free to speak what we actually want. And when I spoke that, I went home and I was like, again my brain kicks in and goes that's not possible, you can't make that happen. And then I worked out how much money would I need to live off for a year if I were to do this. And then I just divided it by 48 months and I was like, yeah, that's actually doable, like I could start putting that money aside and I could make that happen. And I think all these things that we want are so much closer than we ever could imagine, but it being stretched to actually speak it out loud and and create it as a possibility, then all of a sudden our subconscious can get to work on how we make that happen yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

How is that developing for you, sam, when, when's, when's year?

Speaker 2:

one of that five years, mate um, I'm still yet to put a date to it, but but I have committed to myself that I'm gonna do it. I am, yeah, and now I'm gonna have to put my money where my mouth is I do.

Speaker 1:

you know what, though, mate? I would gently challenge you on that, because I don't think it's ever about whether you do or don't take a year off every five years. It's about who you become and grow and what you learn about yourself on the way. Yeah, as I reflect that back to myself.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, thanks for pointing me there, because what I have done is I've essentially created a life where I don't work in the school holidays so that I can be with my boys. So I'm a single dad, so in the holidays I only work on the days where the boys are, with Emma, for example, to make sure that, yeah, because that was born out of that I was like I want to be. I want the boys to leave school and look back on their childhood and be like, oh shit, dad never worked in the holidays. He was always with us doing stuff and making memories. Yeah, so no thanks for putting me there.

Speaker 1:

No worries, buddy, and I'll tell you why. It's because one of my things was also because I remember you wrote a few things in the first part of that newsletter or that email, and it was about taking time off. Yeah, and one of mine was, yeah, also, take three months off over summer, which is the Spanish school holidays, and three weeks off over the winter, which is what the kids do here. Yeah, and again, the noise that comes around that. But I did that in the summer and I'll be doing that this winter. So, yeah, awesome around that, but I've, I did that in the summer and I'll be doing that this winter. So, yeah, awesome, sam. I'm I'm gonna start to wrap it up, buddy, but I'm curious to know is there anything you'd like to speak about before, before we go?

Speaker 2:

no, nothing, nothing comes to mind. I think for me, this life is just an exploration and these kinds of conversations are amazing to spark ideas and thoughts, and I know that there'll be moments where stuff downloads in the next month, which were kind of ignited here. So I want to thank you for creating that space awesome mate.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you very much for for showing up in this space, mate. Where can people potentially get a hold of you, sam, if they're interested in finding out more about you or indeed working with you?

Speaker 2:

mate, so I'm on linkedin. I don't have a website because I don't want to maintain a website, and if you want to email me, it's Sam at thisisthechangingroomcom. And if anyone is interested in doing that exercise the crazy life exercise send me an email and I can send it across, because everyone's always getting some pretty interesting results from it yeah, love it, mate, or maybe I could even put a well, yeah, but I'll put the links to to who, where you are, mate, in in the show notes here.

Speaker 1:

But, um, sam, thanks so much for your time today, mate. I've really appreciated this conversation. Um, I, I say this quite a lot, but I love who to my guests, because, it's true, but I love who you're being in this world, mate, thanks for having the courage to show up as you do, speak your truth. It's very inspiring. I feel, yeah, privileged to have had your time and got to know you a bit today, mate. So, thank you.

Speaker 2:

Thanks, Aaron. Thanks for having me.