what does it mean to live life to the fullest train to your potential and perform at your best, Leave nothing on the table. That's a non negotiable is that I strive to be better every day because if I'm not on top of my game, how is anybody else gonna follow me down the road? Keep demanding more of yourself to, to live up to that potential and to stay hungry. Training is progress. You know, when I look at the word training, I think of steps, baby steps to get somewhere that you want to be and that is basically your life journey. That's a mindset in itself, man, it's like, it's not just about, I know that for you, a lot of that's about the physical, but we're constantly in training, whether it's growing our skill sets, whether it's growing up physical bodies, whether it's growing our relationships, whatever and all of that is a training ground and that kind of goes back to the mindset that we just talked about. You underestimate yourself and you don't even start, but then once you start, you often surpass what you thought you could do perform at your best mate. That's that's sort of what life is all about. You don't have the knowledge and have the fitness, the healthy ambition and drive that no matter what comes along.

When that next phone call comes, I can just say yes, I don't have to worry, just go and do it. Hey guys, welcome to today's episode of the live train, perform podcast? I'm your host, Sean Cobra and joining me in today's episode, The lads from Swiss Eight. Anyone that's been following the podcast for a long time, knows that I speak about Swiss ate a lot. It is a proactive mental health program designed to allow people to structure in eight pillars of health and wellness to become better at life. Adrian max. Welcome to the podcast boys, how are you? Might? Good, I'm very good. How you doing max? Good, good, good, good to see your brother, That hair looks amazing. I always talk about anyway anytime I, I ask people questions on the swiss state principles, which one of them is most important for them. Um a lot of times people say discipline, sleep, blah blah blah blah. Um a lot of the military guys that I've spoken to like, yeah, whenever I got out of the army, like I stopped cutting my hair and I stopped shaving and shit like that and you're going through that same process right now bro. Yeah, I think it's my transition, I'm living and breathing it, so maybe it's a struggle trying to, I'd like to say that I do a lot of fitness, but in the process of doing it, uh it gets in your hair, you got to do hair bands, it's a thing, I can't say it's anything I've ever experienced Adrian, you've experienced this mate, Your hair was pretty long this time last year when you're over here.

Yeah, well it was long, I never wore a bloody ponytail, but max no, it wasn't 100% right mate. Um when you start to train here goes in your eyes, it's the, the old military mindset of like I'm growing here just because I can now, even though there's not a lot of function in having long hair, not my hair, it's too thin. I don't know. What do you reckon about that max? I'm sure you've got different ideas. Make your role in that long hair there, there must be some benefit to it. Just rebelling against 18 years to get my hair cut short. Maybe we're going for a look, I think um yeah, I don't know, I mean trouble, try and figure it out. I think Hawaiian shirts, long hair and beards is relaxed, look, I don't know that that's going to court over to corporate, but during covid a little bit more relaxed, I think business suits and a ponytail is going to be a bit difficult. I don't know if we can pull it off affected Europe in Darwin as well. Um now we're going to talk about your transition a moment because you have transitioned from the military back to civilian space the most recently.

Um but for those people who haven't been listening to the podcast for that long, I did do an interview with Adrian, who is the founder of Swiss eight, probably about six months ago. Um and we discussed uh why? So we say it was started what they were working on their vision, they were working towards, we had a really good conversation, so if anyone wants to go back and listen to that episode, I'll have that link in the show notes. Um After that interview I went through the eight pillars of health and wellness, um sleep, nutrition, discipline, time management, fitness, personal growth, mindfulness and minimalism, and then I rounded out that 10 part miniseries with an interview with tristan rows of blind tiger yoga, who is the subject matter expert on the mindfulness components. So um Adrian, just for any new audience members, can you just give them a brief quick and dirty five minute introduction to yourself and what you're doing right now, what your role is with Swiss A Yeah mate, um pull me up if I start to waffle.

Um Five minutes should be enough easy. Uh So obviously I was in the army like the you boys wear as well. Um My story was I wanted to be in the army Trevor like aspiring to SF was kind of the goal. Uh I got it in the kind of busiest time, the best time possible through young glory days, Glory, glory days of the army of the military. Um And then I I left a month before I did s a selection. My sister died. Uh And and kind of halfway through s a selection is when it kind of caught up with me became a reality and I didn't have emotional intelligence back then, didn't really know what how to process anything. Um And it buckled me a bit. I left selection, I was out of the army fairly quickly after that I dove straight into business which um I'm fairly 80 d. like I need to be doing something, I need to be focusing my mind on something all the time. Business is the perfect um gap field, but perfect distraction. It's something that requires all of your attention all the time if you're going to do it well.

And it was the perfect distraction for me because it meant that I spent another three or four years not having to deal with emotion, which is fantastic. Uh And then when I when I sold those businesses and had a lot of spare time, nothing really motivated me, nothing to getting me out of bed, that's when the wheels fell off for me. Um And and thankfully around that time I started to catch up the boys and I went nearly three years after I left the military without going and hanging out with the boys because most of the boys then we're either NSF units are still in Townsville, which is Townsville Sydney um Perth for for us in Australia. Um And I was in Newcastle, so nowhere geographically close to the boys. Uh And then when people start getting married we're catching up, everyone starts to slowly, especially on the pier starts to slowly event their baggage and and talk about what they're going through in life. Um, and we started to discuss like what was happening in life when we were mentally positive, mentally healthy and what was, what was our lifestyle like when we weren't re occurring patterns with all of us were if we were motivated by something, if we had a purpose driven to do something, get out of bed training well eating well sleeping well, everything was good.

Uh, and the vice versa, if we weren't, if we didn't have a reason to get out of bed, if we were training poorly or not training at all, drinking piss too much, not sleeping, not eating properly. Um, you get anxious and depressed really quickly. And so we started to put together a concept of, We did a bunch of research, we realized this stuff had been studied to death over the last 20 years individually. No one had put it together holistically as holistic health models to proactively drive reduction in anxiety, depression. Um, so we, we put together a concept as we're just discussing before this car is the original concept was get a farm run lessons run courses, bring 10, 20 people in at the time teaching some stuff. The end state being, we just wanted to, we had some lessons that we learned. We wanted to pass them on to young young people getting out of the military. It took us 5 to 10 years to learn things, the hard way, we wanted to pass that stuff on straight away. Um, Financially, we couldn't do it. We couldn't buy a farm and run courses cost about $2 million 10 people of time.

Then unfortunately, um, mine, the other kind of inner circle started dropping like flies. We started losing guys fairly rapidly to suicide. Um, and the first of which been, uh, we're not the first, but the big one for us was Jesse bird. That was the catalyst. That kind of said, you've got this idea, get it rolling now or you spend your whole life focusing on money and business and what you're supposed to do in the western world and you're gonna have no mates left to fucking tell stories with. So sort that out quickly. And that was it. And that was where it was born. We turned it into an app, um, took these habits and rolled them out. Uh, and the rest is history. I mean, we're obviously an organization that's growing, trying to evolve, Do new things in the text base. We are a tech startup essentially. But everything we do is to build interventions for mental health. Mm Here we are. That was solid mate. Right on five minutes. Well done. Perfect max your turn mate. Give me five minutes quick and dirty time is on go my literally join the infantry like everybody else and and that was going to be inside the jail or join the infantry.

Uh, no, I was gonna join up as a, as a cavalry officer to be honest. And um, the what the hell you would asserted that. Yeah, I reckon me but the recruiter had different ideas. He was a infantry um, sniper and so I guess it was a sniper supervisor and was like, I think I rocked up moldy intoxicated to recruiting or hungover and he took one smell. I mean it was like in harmony, you're gonna want the infantry, that's for you. So I joined up and I was privileged, like I said, look but Adrian, I mean we got in 2000 and 2 to 2000 and 18 and for the 1st 10 years it was like perfect mate, perfect deal to go over and serve your country, got it in. And then I thought about going to the next level selection and, and stuff like that. Uh, and wasn't successful, so kept on going and sergeant was sort of the pinnacle that I felt where I wanted to sort of get to and maybe have a poke at CSN see what was going on.

But for the current climate, I just saw the CSM is just miserable sitting in their offices for 16 hours a day with no face time with the lads. I sort of made a decision and maybe for the sake of having kids down the track, how about my body is not really holding up, maybe get out and sort of progress would say because start things started happening and the conversations and sort of sort of gave me a tap on the shoulder one day and said, hey look, we motherfucking do it now or we're going to go to another funeral. So like, fuck, I mean, let's do it. So here I am mate. Yeah, man, Here we are. Here we are. Having this conversation. Now. You're, as I said before, you're out of all of us. You're the one that's discharge or transition from the military to civilian space. The most recent. How long ago was that? You spent 18 years in the army? Right, Yep. And then you transitioned, when was that? Like last year? This time last year when we were doing our yoga course, october october man.

I don't get out till october Yeah. So, um, may we had James Long who was the, he's a current servant CSM in his managing delta company or the rehabilitation company slash platoon. And it's just a difference on, I think who manages you going out? And I don't think it was a byproduct of being a sergeant at all. Um, it's the same as for for a digger all the way through. But we, I just, I was just cognizant of it mate and knowing the system and I think expectation management made for me was massive. I new devi was clogged up. I knew that if I needed to get out, I need to, I need to really forecast. And that way it's in where I think you're going to be and I'm not getting frustrated, a situation that I can't control. Um, and maybe he looked after me, we did a lot of meaningful engagement stuff, which was yoga and causes the army's paying for and fucking here I am I dude, that's a, that's a really good point.

Right? Like, you know, you have gotten out the most recently and you know, you've got all of these guys that did get out 68, 10 years ago that have walked the path before you. So they're already giving you that these tools to essentially prepare you because I've spoken to a number of people on the podcast and you know, the transition process is typically done from people who are still in the military that haven't gone through the transition process. So it's like, what the fuck would they know? Um, so you've had, I guess the luxury of having your mates go before you that have walked that path that are then passing on that lived experience to give you the tools and some of the techniques and some of the things that you can, um pretty much look out for. And as you said forecast, knowing that walking back into the civilian space, you know, you're not going to be able to rely on other people as much as you rely on the boys in the army. You're not going to be able to, you're not gonna be holding people to the same standards as you hold your soldiers to and the guys either side of you.

Um, I think that's um, that's, that's a massive positive man and that's essentially what the whole concept of is of Swiss eight. You know, for me it is about helping like our generation that have gone through that transition process. And you know, I've read a lot of studies where they're talking about um, like signs of PTSD and things like that showing up roughly 10, 10 years after the event, roughly a decade after the event where you know, people have a little bit more time to sit back and Get a little bit introspective about their life and things that have happened to them and then no longer as distracted as they were before then. So all these signs and symptoms start coming up and for me, like it's important to have these tools to be able to apply them at the appropriate time, but not only that for our generation, you know, guys that are still in at the moment that or have just recently got, got out over the last couple of years or guys that are getting out, you know, over the next year or two. So I think these tools are fucking amazing man and I'm 100% behind you guys and we'll always support what you guys are doing.

So it's a pleasure for me to be on board as an ambassador for you guys. Yeah man, I really appreciate it dude, I having someone like you that that's from that sort of high performing background as well, that can see the utility and it I I just think People sort of go through life speaking to that last point you made about, about waiting 10 years for stuff to come up. I think that's probably one of the big ones, a lot of the boys or some guys and I'm trying, I'm not mincing words, but I think people, um they compartmentalize or just get on with life while they're in the military there so fast and like you said, it's going so quick that to go and get treatment to go and see us so I can go, hey, just do a bit of a tune up and say, hey things going okay. It's a pretty big can of worms that open up and, and I don't think it's as effective getting treatment while you're serving and then having to perform, going to a psych, spilling the beans and then going back to work and pretending you're a platoon sergeant, it's kind of hard to throw those hats on and off and I think maybe once you get out and you do take that time and you start that introspective journey.

Maybe then there's there's a four, but I don't want to predisposition people are thinking that in 10 years, I'm going to have PTSD like I think that's the biggest, you can be completely fully functional, right? Yeah, if you don't have to automatically 10 years old, I've got PTSD I mean I'm gonna drink and I'm a broken bedroom. Yeah, that's a great point, man. It's like, you know, prevention is better than cure and this is the whole fucking idea of this proactive model. It's like, don't wait until you're in a position where you need to ask someone for help, fucking put your hand up and go, all right, I'm I can feel the wheels are coming off. I'm drinking a little bit too much on my energy levels are low, my testosterone is fucking crashed. You've got no sex drive because of I'm not exercising, I'm not eating, probably I'm not getting enough sleep, I'm not getting enough sunshine. Like what can I fucking do right now, that's going to put the handbrake on and stop me rolling down that fucking hill. Let's put the handbrake on and then let's start putting these tools into place. That's going to turn me around, get me back on the right tracks and just get me moving in the right direction and once I can do that, then I add another tool, then I add another tool, then I do it for longer than I it's progressive overload man.

You know, we need to look at these tools and we need to apply the approach, the appropriate dosage at the appropriate time. You know, I spoke to um you guys did the interview with Simon maloney, the sniper that got shot in the throat in Afghanistan fucking legend, May I have had a conversation with him recently? Um The episode is gonna be dropping on monday a couple of weeks ago by the time this drops. But um you know something we spoke about there was when we did our yoga course last year, you boys are on the course, you know, we all had that conversation, it was a course full of veterans, heavy hitters, infantry soldiers that have been fucking on the ground that had been fighting and yoga is can be used as a great tool, particularly in Seoul yoga where you're sitting there, you're stretching your focusing on your breath, um you're practicing mindfulness meditation okay? But if you get a dude who's just come back from Afghanistan who's in fucking highly sympathetic state and they're sitting in a yoga class for an hour, being told to fucking breathe man, they're probably going to wig out, they're not going to want to be there. So that tool, whilst the principle is correct, the dosage is not appropriate.

So we need to figure out what that dosages and that might be for someone like fucking sit down and take five deep breaths over the course of one minute, you might just start there, do that every day for a week and then add another minute and then add another minute so on so forth. Yeah the I'm doing this stuff. So um the functional approach to yoga which is one of tristan Rose blind tiger, his mentor. Um we're finalizing the courses there and he talks about a yoga being the step the journey to introspection. And we do that by Instead of teaching people feel how you feel and it doesn't work if we teach people hey hold the stretch for five minutes And then at the end of the five minutes when you release the stretch and you notice the rush of blood and feeling and movement. Then we start we start we start internalizing those sensations and we can move that by stretching and moving those Muscles in the seven archetypal poses, we start to get the feeling of what that energy is moving around our body.

And then as we sort of progress we can do it with our breath and imagining moving that body with breathing right? And then as you progress through the through the seven limbs of yoga or whatever it is, um you can you can gain introspection but they say that yoga is the start of learning introspection by your physicality. And I think that can be achieved not just with fucking yoga but strength training or whatever people's meditation or motivation is. Yeah, just to add to that as well. Like again for me everything comes back down to principles, right? So the way that I think about and the reason I believe that and I might be fucking completely wrong. But I think about principles and the reason I believe the install yoga is effective is because you control your breathing and you pay attention to your breath. Now if we think about how the breath um creates a physiological response in the body then we can start to understand how we can use our breath too chill out to calm down to drive the parasympathetic nervous system.

So if I sit here and I start fucking hyperventilating what I can do to my heart rate, my heart rate increases. My respiratory rate increases. My muscle tone increases. I drive the sympathetic nervous system which is the fight or flight state. But if I can sit down, take some nice deep breath, put on some relaxing meditative music set. That environment go through those nice long deep breaths long inhales, pause, long exhales. That's going to have a physiological response in my heart rate decreases. My respiratory rate decreases. Um You know my muscle tone decreases. I read a study actually saying That 10 minutes of breath work, meditation, mindfulness, call it whatever the fuck you want to do breathwork where you're driving the parasympathetic nervous system is actually just as if not more effective than doing mobility work prior to going into a heavy um strength session. And that's simply because you're calming the central nervous system, you're releasing the tension.

The tone in the muscles by down regulating that sympathetic nervous system which is the stress response of fight or flight. So that makes perfect evolutionary sense to me. And again the principles are what's most important to me. So finding those tools that are going to apply those principles correctly at the right time in the appropriate dosage, that's where the fucking magic is for me. I think it's I think yeah, finding that uh finding the underlying principles, removing the woo hoo and then finding and then changing it so that it is palatable for your particular audience. Uh and then an instructor that they believe in that will help them is also easy at the start, right? So instead of having someone trying to teach you because I can't do I can't do asana the like the more active yoga poses and focus on my breathing because onto a flexibility of a stick and when they're like and just and now imagine the color green and relax with your breath and move with your breath move at all.

I'm just fucking out of breath and I'm burning and I fucking hate you. So yeah, so I go, oh yeah sorry earlier on around because the fucking dog was winding um not my dog a dog anyway, no, when when mix gets in a flow. Talking about his yoga made, I love listening. But I think the biggest takeaway that I I pulled from from that whole thing is that the way it's delivered or the person is delivered by is so important. Like the yoga has been fucking destroyed by flower dehydrated shirt, fucking hippies who I have no problem with, right? I used to be one love hippies. However, they've, they've hijacked yoga breathing, stretching and meditating is essential for everyone who wants to be healthy, um, optimally healthy in some form of another. But if you even even today, like they are preaching, you've got to get your energy right, you've got it, you you're on the wrong vibration man.

And like that turns most people off straight away, you put a scientist in the room, you're like, humans are made up of atoms, atoms are made up of energy at its fucking smaller sense. Or Adams in your body are vibrating at a certain frequency, That makes complete sense. So if if I'm vibrating incorrectly, then something is physiologically going to be wrong or potentially will be wrong in the future. Now, if a doctor, a scientist or a high performing athlete or an exercise physiologist or a coach sits down and explain it to you like that, you're like, well, maybe I should pay a little bit more attention to this um meditation. This, this breathing concept. This energy vibrational stuff. If I go on youtube and I see a or on instagram and I see a check, telling me how to do a headstand and get my vibration right. I'm like now maybe the shit is not for me. They're preaching the exact same thing. I don't believe that 99% of the girls preaching it on instagram, girls and guys actually preaching the wood model on instagram actually know what they're talking about scientifically, but the concept there on the right track.

um, so when you talk about prescription and does 100% and it's also the tools that you adopt into your own routine or your own holistic model are often biased by the person who is pushing the information towards you and that's something we need to start changing breath work. I mean the book, I just finished James ness's book called breath. Um, and it changed the game for me. Like some of the techniques that, I mean he, he goes deep around the world talking about, I've spent the last four weeks training every day without opening my mouth, just nose breathing. Ah, and already I haven't up my cardio because that's heaven forbid. Already workouts are getting easier. Um, you walk into a gym on day one, close your mouth, don't open your mouth at all while you're on assault bike, whatever you're doing rowing. It feels like you're suffocating, just trying to nose breathe when you're getting gassed after. I mean it's been four weeks after, it's probably 2.5, 3 weeks of doing it. I finished the same, it took me the same amount of time to get the same distance at the same intensity.

I didn't feel gas at all. Um and that for mine is again, I wasn't extreme cardio, I wasn't getting super fit and and that was why I was having that kind of response. It was just through breathing. And I mean the way he delivered in his book made sense to me. If someone sat me down and said, hey, come to my meditation breathing class a year ago, I would have said, no, I'm good, thanks mate. But now it's something that I'm diving into heavily. Um that's the point, man. So I go on, I was gonna say I've only scratched the surface like I don't want to talk too much at the moment about breath work because I don't want to be pretend instagram are that read one article and becomes a self confessed experts. But there is, I've scratched the surface and it's changed the game for me already. Uh, this is coming from, but I've done plenty of breathing style of meditation in the past, but I didn't focus on the act of breathing. I just focused on the fact that breathing was my distraction from thinking, which is a great place to start. Like it was, it was a way for me to turn my brain off and just try and get present.

Um, whereas now the the concept of pushing out carbon dioxide, which is what he goes into, uh fairly deeply is something I'm heavily focused on and it's starting to change the game for me in multiple areas of life. So it's good. That's a great point, mate. Um people if that's your entry level, is just focusing on your breathing to become a distraction from your own mind, then that's a good place to start, okay? But then you need to take it to the next level. And as you said, man, like you're using that you're breathing as a tool, you're not using your breathing or you're not using that assault bike or that workout to fucking hammer yourself and improve your cardio. You're literally using that to focus on your breathing. Now, a point that I want to make here is when you do that, when you're focusing on your breathing just through your nose, you're not breathing through your mouth, you actually focus on breathing correctly. And that means diaphragmatic breathing and the diaphragm is a muscle and just like muscles.

If you don't use it, you lose the ability to contract that muscle. So that's literally all you're doing is you're training your diaphragm to contract, relax, contract, relax, and you're pushing. And this is you made a really good point there, man about carbon dioxide. Most people when they jump on an assault by like that, they're doing a cardio session, they're trying to breathe in more. But what they actually need to do is breathe out more and exhale the carbon dioxide that's been exchanged for oxygen. So that when they do do take that next breath in, they are able to utilize that oxygen 100%. And that was the biggest takeaway for me was I mean it's I mean he wrote he's obviously his books killing it because he's dropping some knowledge that it goes against what most people think is common sense um for most of my life, all taught that if you're going to exert yourself, you need to get in more oxygen. And that's why it's always like big deep breaths and you don't really give a shit about breathing out. Uh And this whole chapters talking about people's posture and the fact that they're not exhaling properly.

It's causing headaches, migraines, a whole bunch of stuff. I mean he goes into face dysmorphia but that's a story for another day. Um But yeah, I like the feel of the response we get. And this is like the whole Wim hof thing too. There's breathing techniques that can warm your body up by not allowing yourself to release carbon dioxide. There's breathing techniques that calming down um that is by slowing your breath, but also by deliberately pushing out the exhale and that's I had no idea. I thought it was all about oxygen intake, but it is more important to focus on getting rid of carbon dioxide mm great point, mate. Fuck, I just want to get to read that book. It's a game changer. I haven't read it yet, but it is definitely on my list. I sort of noticed even stopping it and not being a an idiot about it all. But when I sort of started getting super fucking frustrated at things, uh whether that's at lights or whatever, noticing what state I'm in body wise.

And the first thing was I was holding my fucking breath, mate, just like not like subconsciously as soon as something's happening and I'm starting to twist off, I'm like, you're holding your breath, breathe, you start breathing like it's not that bad. It's going to be right. Even that like play around with um I'd butcher if I try and paraphrase, but um play around with if you hold your breath on an inhale, that's generally what you're doing when you're about to twist off the traffic lights. But holding your breath on an exhale can be used to manipulate a little bit, but can be used to to calm down panic attacks. Because one thing uh anthropologically we did not do when we're about to go into combat was stopped breathing. Um so again, I don't want to butcher it. I'd have to go back and reread a couple couple of chapters to before I start quoting this stuff, but there is definite and I've tried this even with box breathing. So four seconds in hold for 44 seconds that hold for four, the whole for four at the bottom is where you start to get panicky. but then when you practice it over time, that is when it calms you down, holding your breath is when you're like all right, I'm good now.

If there was an actual threat, I'd probably fucking panic breathing. But I know my brain now responds to the 4 2nd. Hold at the bottom is I'm actually not going to die from anything right now. So I'm like yeah, that's a great point mate. Like you need to condition yourself to um these things in a controlled environment so that you're much better able to deal with these things when they do come up in an uncontrolled environment. And again, it goes back to that progressive overload of starting with something that's manageable and achievable that you can do consistently day after day, for weeks months etcetera before you then start pushing that and shifting that needle. Um Now I want to go back to something you spoke about earlier um when you're talking about the sources of information because you know, this is this is the society that we live in and you know yoga meditation, mindfulness, all that type of stuff like for me, I find super valuable and I've told the story on the podcast numerous times about being in Afghanistan and not being able to sleep and literally just counting my breaths every night before going to bed and that helped me wake up in the morning feeling fresh, feeling good, changing my mindset like right, I'm fucking in control of this, we're going to fight on our terms, we're going to, you know, we're in control of our situations and that literally changed my mindset, but I didn't know what I was doing for years and then try and was like, oh you're actually meditating, okay, cool, now I'm going to fucking start implementing that every day.

But it was funny because I actually dated a yoga teacher for five years after I got out of the army and she was pushing that stuff on me and the way that she was presenting it and the way that she was using it, I was like that shit is not for me, right? But then I heard it come from Tristan and he used that to help him treat his ptsd anxiety, depression and dig himself out of that hole and get back into a better place and become a fucking functioning person within society. And I was like, okay, like that's definitely got some benefits. So I really believe the source of the information is really important. Now, we like to categorize people and put people into boxes. So as you said, Adrian, like if you're getting that information from a yogi on instagram, well one, you're probably not fucking following that person for the yoga and meditation advice, let's be honest, right? But you know, the the same thing applies for strength training athletes and power olympic lifters and sprinters and things like that, you know, people um just put people into boxes and say, well this person, you know, this is this is this is a myth that still surrounds the fitness industry, That pisses me off, man, it's like chicks go, I don't want to lift weights and I don't want to be big and bulky, it's like we're not going to be big and bulky, Like I've been lifting for fucking 20 years, trying to get massive hasn't happened, right.

You know, there's definitely benefits those chicks that are doing yoga, They should definitely be doing more strength based work and the guys that are fucking lifting weights all day every day, you know, they definitely need to be doing some more like stretching and mindfulness and breath work and things like that. So, you know, if we start looking at the thing I love about my industry with strength and conditioning is we're now seeing like all of this technology, we've got all this access to this information, we've got all these research papers and scientists and subject matter experts coming out and like, you know, talking about the benefits of all of these things and you know, we need to open our minds and broaden our horizons and say, well there must be something to this instead of just fucking, you know, putting it in a box and saying, well, I'm not going to this mindfulness meditation, breath breath work, whatever I'm going to figure out a way that I can apply that to my own life and see if I can see the benefits to it. You know, if we look at high level athletes man, most fucking high level athletes, you know, they have a strength and conditioning coach, they have a nutritionist, they have um like a mobility coach, they have a soft tissue worker or a body worker or they have a physiotherapist, they have all of these different coaches that are guiding them on all these different areas.

You know, we need to start taking all of these different tools and figuring out ways that we can apply them to our life so that we can be better at life. Yeah, mate, I I agree. And I think we were out at the moment with yoga chakras breathing, fucking energy healing. I think we're in the The stage where we were at 2, 300 years ago with superstition. And me and max, we talked about this a bit on other podcasts, but there's a time where wives tales um superstition beliefs, they're there for a reason, right? And more often than not. Uh there's something scientific going on. We just are a couple 100 years before we realize it. Uh an example makes you the other day. And so it used to be bad luck to put your shoes on the table. It used to be bad luck to walk under a ladder. Uh and and science minded people back in the day wrote it off going that there's no basis to that. That's superstition kind of how most people write off energy and yoga at the moment.

And then we find out a couple of 100 years later that by walking around and shoes all day in a fairly unhygienic environment and putting your shoes on the table generally means you're dropping bacteria in the place where you're about to eat and you're going to get fucking sick Walking under a ladder more nine times out of 10 back in the day when no one really gave a shit about workplace health and safety meant that something was going to fall on you, right? And they just linked the I I think, I think that's where we're at. I think like the correlation causation argument is that somewhere someone in history has come up with an idea and they preached it as when you breathe this way, it makes you healthy when you get your vibrations in the right and they've used that and they've gone, all right. I did what they said. I was skeptic, I did what they said and now I'm healthier. Therefore their reasoning must be true, which is not just because it correlates, doesn't always mean that's what's going on. So I think, I mean this is just a prediction, but I feel honestly like, I feel like that's where we're going to get to in a couple 100 years.

We're going to maybe less, hopefully less. We are going to have scientific backing that shows how energy and vibrations affect the human body. Yeah and how, I mean we're already getting there with breathing. We're already the Shaka argument. Um I know Tristen says that there is science at the moment. I haven't seen it won't won't debate it either way, but I think we're going to get there. I think that we're going to have scientific proof that we were was like superstition back in the day. There was fact to it, they just pitched it. There's stuff like what's the, even the, even the social talking about what we're talking about before. Uh People have an aversion to mouth breathers like you fucking mouth breathing. Fuck closure. Why? Where did it come from? And tracing back all of these things um it's about the indians, he's the indians used to, they were like you will die if you breathe out of your mouth. This guy from his book is like, they would actually, Mums would teach their newborn babies.

They generally hold their hands over their mouth to teach them to breathe out your nose. Like people had an aversion to mouth breathing for hundreds of thousands of years. Uh and now suddenly we lose all these things in life. Like where are the things that we learned in school, We learned how to balance I well we're going to learn how to do tax, but we learn what pi is 2, 16 decimal places. Um But you don't learn some of the holistic things in life that will actually prolong and improve your and make you better life. And I think maybe going back and learning and looking back at the way people used to do it. We learned that with food, food was the first one. How did your grandma used to eat vegetables, steak, unprocessed foods? We fucked that up as we went in high speed. Um and then we fucked it up. Yeah, There is there is something to say about that though, like obviously the world's population has exploded in the last 70 odd years. Um and you know, science technology has increased our ability to sustain ourselves and you know pass on our genes to the next generation and you know, that's allowed us to, you know, science technology has allowed us to hold onto food, refrigerate and freeze it.

Um You know create food and have easy access to food all the time. Like we used to have a problem being able to sustain ourselves and get enough calories in. You know, now it's the opposite problem where you've got so much fucking food accessible that you know now obesity is a massive problem in the in the world rather than undernourishment, you know, so there's there's definitely definitely some positives that have come out of that, but you know the point that I want to make here is like going back to what you said about grandma. um I think 70 years ago, 80 years ago, nine years ago, something like that, the average intake of sugar was like 18 g or something like that per day, which is roughly like 4.5 teaspoons. Now the average intake of sugar per day, something like 70 to 80 g, which is like fucking 16, 17, 18 teaspoons of sugar every single day. Now, you know, there's a difference between evolution and revolution. Revolution is something that happens over a short period of time. Evolution takes place over fucking long periods of time and we've evolved in these human bodies that have taken these slow changes, these slow processes over long periods of time.

And we've gone through these revolutions where you know, the agricultural revolution that's allowed humans to live in larger tribes, larger societies. Then we've gone through the industrial Revolution, um and all that type of stuff where life is essentially easier, but we're now eating more, we're moving less and we're living in this, we're still living in the same body. It hasn't had a chance to catch up to the different revolutions that we've gone in particularly over the last like 100 to 200 years and in particular, like the last 50 years, man. Uh well, the invention of Exactly man, the Industrial revolution and the invention of the light bulb, it's probably done a lot more damage to people's health than we realized. Like people just went to fucking sleep at night time now where you know what I mean? Now we're staying up till 10:00 at night not sleeping and that's that's circadian rhythm and like we are fucking with our own like evolutionary biology because we have access to all of these things.

So like you said when we go back to living like fucking caveman somewhat then we're probably, our body is going to go back to homeostasis a lot easier and it's going to be you know, a lot better. Our body is going to function as it should be. But you know it's it's I mean fuck nobody wants to go back to living in the dark ages right? But we need to look at again all of these tools that we have electricity. Adrian's like fuck yeah I'm on keto man. I mean caveman style. I I think I think we fit in a lot better. Some people I think we do pretty well, my little cohort and knuckle draggers. Yeah but the point is like you know everything is a tool. So when once we last time we spoke Adrian you spoke about, you know everything that you look look at is um evolutionary psychology, evolutionary biology. You know if we if we take into account how we evolved and then we start using those principles to live our life and then using the tools, the technology, the science, the medicine and things like that that we have access to.

We can allow that. We can use that to better our lives rather than fucking living like shit. And then using that stuff to fix our lives when when when a problem comes up. 100% made. I think, I mean medicine science, it's obviously fantastic. We're not dying at childbirth anywhere near as rapidly as we were back and they were in the volume that we were back in the day. But realistic, you think Darwin be turning in his grave at the moment watching it used to be survival of the fittest, right? And that's how evolution improve the species. Um Only the strong survive the strong mate. Uh And then they make a a stronger baby or a stronger offspring. And I mean, even in humans, in most animals, you find a partner pairing through pheromones that say their their faults in their immune system will be paired with the improvements or the opposite opposing faults in mind. Therefore we will have a healthy kid these days. We prolonged death to the point through drugs, through through machines, through um scientific advancements.

But we prolonged death to the point artificially to the point where people aren't dying enough. Um Unfortunately, it's a hard it's a hard conversation to have. Um And because there's I think I think that there's some massive sorry. But yeah, there's a person to give you it's not prolonging death or it is but it's allowing And I don't want to get no eugenics debate. But there is a lady who was so selfish. This is an assist on 60 minutes. She and her husband had a 97% chance of passing on a genetic defect to a kid if they managed to reproduce. And that was that the kid can never eat solid foods. She can't eat solid foods, she has to get forced that she has to get fed through a drip into her stomach. But she wanted to have a kid because that's so God given right to have a kid. So she said they had the kid and guess what? The kid will never eat solid foods. That's the fucking premeditated child abuse mate. Um but yeah, 100%. Like we we no longer are a society of elite humans.

We cannot call ourselves the tip of the spear. Unfortunately we are accepting and almost encouraging unhealthy behavior in every walk of life and fat shaming. That's a thing that you're not allowed to do it. Um If people have any form of defects, I get it like society is better if everyone is nice to each other. However, there is the real probability that we are de evolving the species. Um And I mean highly likely we get to the point where technology doesn't even require human evolution anymore. But that's a whole other topic to discuss. Um I I think we will within our lifetime, maybe one or two generations in the future. See massive class divides of people who want to live a survival based lifestyle. I train hard push themselves grow constantly and there'll be a society of people who are happy with amazon Uber eats and fucking netflix. And it's it's comfort versus survival. Like a lot of like we spoke about last time everything that I kind of see as common sense is proven biologically anthropologically or whatever we've evolved to a certain way and that's why it makes sense with science.

Um and the other the other thing that I always revert back to which isn't overly smiled upon by a lot of scientific communities MMA solves hierarchy of needs and that is the base it is. You need to find food and shelter and that is no longer a challenge. Biological needs, that's no longer a challenge for everyone. And that is the base of a survival based organism and that is what humans are. And that's why we've we've kind of grown to the apex predator, top of the food chain that we have. Whereas now the majority of society is survival is not there motivator comfort is. And comfort years as everyone knows a slow death and sitting at home not going outside getting everything delivered. You can live your life like the fucking slobs that ride their things in that wally movie riding around in a spaceship, everything's on tap and you get obese and unhappy real quick. Um So it's a dark way to look at the future. But I think there's a high possibility of a segmentation in humans just based on attitude towards life.

Mm I read something recently that the current generation that is being born will be the first generation that does not outlive their or live longer than their parents for the first time in a fucking long time man. Like that, hearing that I was like that's crazy. But it does make sense because we are no longer a most people that live in the Western world that you know, as you said, have everything on top. They live in this perpetual comfort and then, you know, they don't really face challenges, They don't really faced many adversities and then when those adversities come up then it fucking hit them hard because they've never faced it before. They've never been conditioned to dealing with tough times. Yeah, I got I got kids and that's a fucking scary thought. Um I mean I am obviously trying to encourage my kids to think outside the box. I do even like what mike said, the indians did like I go actively go to my kids and put my hand over their mouth and just see what the response is because my oldest kid, he's always blocked up and there's a bunch of reasons why they were working on, but he's always full of snot daycare kids are full of fucking sickness unfortunately, but forcing him to breathe through through his nose is something that I'm definitely going to keep doing because otherwise we'll get, I don't want to even think about getting to the point where I'm healthier or outliving my kids.

I think that's fucking gross suffering is the piece that allows you to then find happiness in your life. If you have suffering, you have to go through suffering to know what happiness is. And I'm not talking about extreme moments of suffering, but it all comes back to some sort of scale of Hugo field and you know, you like you do the sniper calls or you do selection or you do, you got bush for six weeks on some hamill exercise and you're eating ration packs, you might have made a salami stick last for six weeks and you're sleeping on rocks and not, you get back and you're like, I just want to have Mcdonald's and have a coat, like, I don't know whatever the simple luxuries and sleep in a bed and have a shower and that's the best fucking thing on the planet and you're so happy when it's done and then you always have a and I'm not saying it's almost Stewart stoicism, like it, things could be big are bad now, but they could have been worse, or oh, that is bad and now I'm happy and I think suffering is a way that that's what people are really buying into now with hunting their own food or going out and hurting themselves in the day and then feeling good afterwards.

I think that that's something that people are going to try and hold on to outside of the basic primal things. Um I have been doing like since this transition in this transition space, I have been Fucking regimental Lee getting up at 10 past for training, walking. I'm doing everything right up in strict Keto dropped about seven kg. I'm fucking doing every single thing right? The one thing I'm not doing is I get fuck all sunlight. Um because I've out for my windows up for, for the studio and I fucking see nobody outside of my missus in the day and I'm fucking going mental meat and so you see all these things that are that a primal um tribe routine identity, all these things you, it has to be a holistic model and that's why the better life and swiss a giving these tools to people that should be free that just prolonging people's fucking life and improving people's um mental state.

We talk about the veteran veteran suicide rates are high. Yes, there fucking are, but everyone's killing shelves, miners, emergency workers, um vets veterinarians are killing themselves at fucking record numbers. Like the mental health crisis is a Western epidemic and creating this thing and having guys like you on board who are just like fucking invested in your people and is massive for me and it's a trust thing. I think the trust is a big one in everything we're doing and talking about these principles um like there's a dude on facebook that's saying he's got a new marketing workout and it's it's proven it's scientifically proven that uh if you can get up without using your hands you'll live longer. I'm like yeah fucking probably because you're not a big fucking fat piece of shit, like we're not looking at this people, then we'll put marketing behind it. But when you're trying to give people stuff for free, which is what we're doing is we're saying what, you know, you're helping us do.

I think that's where we build the trust and we sort of make a difference mate. Yeah man, sorry, that was a rant. Was good, a good uh session done. Um I want to go back to what you just said then like you're doing everything right in your mind where you're getting up, your training, your blob, eating healthy, did it okay? But then you know, we need to look at the wheel of life and you're you just said you're not getting enough sunshine and you're not seeing Any friends, you don't have that sense of community in that sense of tribes. So yes, you might be ticking the boxes in all of these areas and you might be dedicating your time energy and effort to those areas at a fucking 10 out of 10, but then you've also dropped off in other areas. So sometimes it's worth like you know, dropping a couple of pegs in some areas so that you can invest that time, energy and effort into other areas so you can get a little bit more sunshine, you can invest more time in building your friendship network and building your own tribe up there and things like that.

So, you know, I think that's a great point is like, you know, we need life is all about fucking balance, man. And you know, whilst you've gone through this period, I'm not sure how long you've been doing that for, but let's say you've been doing it for a couple of months and other areas of your life have taken a little bit of a hit. It might be worth going All right paul, I've built the discipline, I built um the standards, the standard operating procedures that I want in those areas of my life. I know how those tools make me feel. Now I'm going to take a little bit of time, energy and effort away from that. I'm going to refocus that those resources over in this direction. I'm going to build out my tribe. I'm going to build out a little bit of a routine that includes getting out, getting some sunshine, getting a little bit of movement etcetera, etcetera and see how that affects me. And then you're constantly like retweeting, readjusting those jigsaw puzzle pieces and fitting it together the best way that's going to suit your life and you know, it's it's about prioritizing things, you're not going to fucking find the best regime, the best regiment that's going to work perfect for you every single day. It's just again, it's taking those principles and going all right, well I know um you know, I haven't been getting enough sunshine, need to get a little bit more of that.

That means I'm gonna be taking away from some of these other areas and it's constantly tweaking refining, adjusting understanding those principles and applying the right dosage at the right time and the education, the education is the key to everything. Obviously, like if max was sitting there hypothetically, I mean he's lucky that he understands like where all the pieces of the puzzle like fit together and I think it is okay. Like if you understand, I'm not claiming we understand everything, but if you understand where the pieces are and you're like all right to achieve goal X. I need to sacrifice two parts of the puzzle for the next three months, whatever it's going to be. Um That's still acceptable. Like if just imagine for a second though, someone's like max sitting in Darwin in a dark room doing a bunch of stuff in the computer all day and going, I've been told that if I go and train in the morning and I I eat properly, then it's going to sort out my mental health problems or it's going to keep me healthy and happy and then you go away and you eat properly trained hard in the morning and you go and sit in a dark room all day and don't speak to your mates for three months and you're depressed as fuck, right?

And you're sitting there going, I don't get what's going on. That is the biggest problem I think lack of it, this is fucking bullshit. This doesn't fuck, I'm just going to go back to the public because the pub obviously is the quick fix. I mean the whole suffering argument couldn't agree more. That is almost the purpose of the meaning of life of mine is how you monitor and manage your suffering. Um and that is it? Like going to the pub? Short term suffering equals long term gain. Long term suffering, short term gain, sorry, vice versa. No, that way. But the other way around, so short term suffering often leads to long term gains um short term positives, short term fun, exciting things often lead to long term pain and suffering and that is where your qualification correct. So I'm down and out. I feel like shit, what am I going to do? I know Last time I smashed six beers really quickly, it made me happy. So you go and do that and then you get a hangover and you feel like fucking shit for two days later. So what do you do? You have no other tools.

You don't have any other education. Last time I was on the peace, I felt really good. So I'll go and do that and it just becomes a cycle. Whereas you put in the hard yards, um suffer fitness is hard for that reason. It is short term suffering, smash yourself in the gym for an hour. You are going to feel good for the rest of the day. Um No brainer and that's that's but the education piece is key to the whole thing. Um understanding everybody on the planet feels anxious and depressed at some time. Um And if you don't, I know it it's no one likes to hear 100% straight up facts, but um if you don't, chances are that you just, you're feeling certain ways, but you're just not sure what that word labels that feeling at the time, because anxiety, depression is a part of life, It's how long we're stuck in those states. Um That, that kind of is the problem. Short term anxiety is a fantastic tool if you know how to play with it properly. Depression, not so fun, but um yes, it's knowing when those feelings come along, what are the areas of life that you need to tweak to get back to a state that makes you feel better.

Uh and what max he knows everyone knows, get the fuck out of Darwin hanging out with boys more and you're gonna be happier. Absolutely made. But I think it's a, it's a education and knowing and for me that it's okay because I know where I think I know where I'm going wrong uh and for me at the moment, I just I have a goal that I'm trying to hit and so outside of that, I mean, yeah, I can go fucking have sunshine for an hour ago and some, it's fucking Darwin. Um that's making excuses, but but just so we could sort of proposed the problem uh the education and having a responsibility of people to constantly adapt and change and not being doc trial in like, no, no, these are the eight principles and and we won't learn, like we change we fitness, we have, we used to be fitness was one of our pillars and we change that to movement. Like fitness isn't mental, it's, you've just got to move your body and you're gonna get fitness doing whatever. But constantly being to strive and to change and to adapt and learn new things and and experience it before you preach it.

Uh I think just, you know, not being, not being a sellout would be be some of that. I'm sort of pretty happy about where we're going. Yeah, before I dive into where you guys are at with swiss state and what you're, what projects you're working on and things like that. Um I do want to say, I want to kind of tie all that in, you know, sometimes you do need to make these sacrifices and I know that both of you boys have been fucking under the pump for the last couple of years trying to, particularly this time last year when the world went into lockdown, you guys were just head down us up, just like getting as much work as you could done, it could, could get done to push this app out to everyone so that everyone had these tools to be able to manage their fucking day to day, manage their life so they could be better at life. But going back to that, like everything is sacrificed Mex, you're, you're up in Darwin, you're under the pump, you've got things that you're working towards, so you're sacrificing certain areas, certain elements of your life because you really want to focus on specific things.

Now, sacrifice that sacrifice is absolutely necessary. Okay, but it can't be like that long term, there needs to become a point where you go, all right, I need to go back the other way a little bit. I need to spend a little bit more time where, you know, maybe I'm not working so hard and I am spending some time with friends and family and you know, switching off a little bit and sharpening the axe, you know, I'm constantly talking about on this podcast about um you know, taking those pillars and then prioritizing them depending on what's going on in my life. So an example of this is, you know, for the most part um, every single day I'm always working on personal growth, I'm always working on my fitness, um sleeps obviously a big one every single day, okay. But when I go about 65 or six months ago, I drove around Thailand took my car and drove around Thailand for like three months, three weeks. I was like, well I can't travel overseas or by car, it's fucking drive around, it covered like 5.5 1000 kilometers in, in three weeks, right? So, you know, I didn't do any training then um my sleep was off, I wasn't eating as well as I normally did because I was fucking out these random places in the middle of Thailand, man, I literally like walked into, there's probably like three or four days where I was in these like places off the beaten path where I could count on one hand how many foreigners I saw in those places over a couple of days and you know, I, I walked into a couple of restaurants, they didn't speak any english, they didn't have any english menus, they didn't have any photos or anything like that.

And the limited tie that I had, I couldn't order anything and I literally had to get up and walk out of those restaurants because they couldn't understand me, I couldn't understand them, right? But the point that I'm making is that, you know, the things that I prioritize when I am at my home environment, we're not the same things that I could prioritize when I was traveling okay, because my priorities had changed, it was no longer about my routine and setting my day up to be the best that I could be every single day I was traveling and I wanted to see as much as I could, I wanted to cover as much ground as I called. And that meant that my sleep patterns are often I was rolling into places late and you know, eating food wherever I could on the fly. And I was getting up early to go and watch sunsets and things like that. So, you know, those tools are there to be fucking applied at the appropriate time. And that's the point that I'm trying to make is like, you need to have a look at all of those tools and then figure out what's the most um important for you at that time and then start switching them around and adjusting them and you know, those those principles aren't set in place.

You take those principles and you use those principles and you understand what those principles are and then you switch everything around and you make it work for you. Yeah, absolutely. And what I mean, you're you're using the word sacrifice a bit like what what makes is essentially doing now is sacrificing X. Because he's got goals he wants to achieve and they require to be inside a lot. Getting work done. I think I think that's the issue like sacrifice and suffering in this context, almost the same definition, right? So if you go, I'm going to sacrifice and this is what I think this is a big problem in the Western world, is that especially in the corporate space we go, I'm going to sacrifice X amount of time because it means a lot. I'm going to get a long term gain, like I'm going to suffer for a year because it means I'm going to get this done in life. Unfortunately, as we talked about earlier with with suffering versus reward, if you let the suffering go on for too long, it becomes chronic and then the reward never comes. Uh and that's what we do. We go, if I if you're not aware and you're not conscious of it and you're not educated on what is going to happen, you go, I'm going to sacrifice the next two months because I need to get this done.

And and then that's going to make X, y z better and then two months comes and you're like, if I just do another two months, then we or in the corporate space, I'm going to sacrifice two years, I'm not going to see my kids are going to work my guts off five photo as well, like fucking massive problem for five for a lot of the guys are like, I'm going to sacrifice two years of my life. I'm going to make a shitload of money and then the reward is going to be fantastic. And then that two years turns into 468, 10. You are now in a chronic state of sacrifice and suffering and then life seems shit. You don't know why the wheels fall off suicidal. Um, and that's that's not a false leap. That is happening. Like the suicide rates in the mining and construction industry are phenomenal. Um, and I mean, I think there's some crossover there. I think it's some crossover in the veteran spaces as we go, right, life, shit. At the moment, I'm gonna just drink Pizza Vietnamese Polly, but I'm gonna, I mean, not just veterans health and and fitness industry too. I'm gonna Just, I'm going to be in for a bit and then I'm going to get in shape at X time and in that time stretches out and 10 years later, you've been obese for your entire life and you hate everything.

Um, so, I think that's a piece of people need to manage is to go, yes, sacrifices looked at as a cool thing. You sacrifice this for this. But if the reward never comes, you are in a chronic state of suffering and your life is not going to be fun. Mm But even even going, going on your adventure, right? So your life is like, you're you're at the peak of your industry mate and your routine and you know, you have the tools, you can relax and go on a holiday and have an adventure knowing full well that I can turn this back on immediately and that I can be guilt free in any, like I might, I can have that extra fucking sausage roll or whatever, you know, I can be guilt free having a bit, I don't know what the fuck it is, but I can do that because I know that I can turn it around and fuck it up, 95% of my life is good, this is my holiday and I'm going to enjoy it. Mm That's a great point and it is that mindset man.

Um I spoke to luke Richmond on the podcast, I interviewed him and he's an ex army guy um got out um basically fucking was getting hosed down in the cells in London covered in his own shit. Um was taking drugs and blah blah blah and just decided right there and then to turn his life around, flew to Thailand trained at Tiger muay thai and like now he's just fucking bad ass adventurer that's written two books like awesome fucking dude, right? But you know, he talked about that sacrifice and he talked about that mindset and that mentality and that's what you need to do. Sometimes you need to make that fucking decision and set yourself those goals. He um after after he came to Thailand he went back to Australia started working with working in the mines and he's like, all right, I want to write a book, I want to start leading this life that I can be proud of, that I can talk to my kids about and I can look back on and be like, fuck man, I achieved a lot of things in my life. And the way that he set himself up to do that was by working in the mines.

And he's like, all right, well, I'm going to give myself a year, I'm going to work, I'm going to sacrifice, I'm going to fly in. I'm going to fly out. Everything else is going to be fucking left on the table. My main priority is to make as much money as I can in the next year so that I can set myself up and go and live this life that I want, right? And you know, he said that a lot of people that he met that are in the minds like exactly the same. I'm gonna do this for two years. I'm gonna save up, I'm going to buy a house. But then they get caught up in that lifestyle, they get caught up in making that money and that and you know, relying upon that, that as Adrian said, they go onto All right, well, if I just do this for another two years, then I'll get this. If I do this for another two years, then I'll get this and he made that decision. He drew that fucking line in the sand and he's like, I'm doing this for a year, I'm going to get as much money as I can. My goal is to make as much money as I can see, you know, sacrifice everything else so that I can go and lead this life and I think that's an important point is you know, when you do make that sacrifice, you need to set a goal, you need to set an endpoint as well where you going to stop that sacrifice and you're going to balance everything out again.

Um something I spoke about with paul as well, I I had an interview with paul from head Up charity who was a great guy, I'm not sure if this will be, this will probably drop after his episode I think. But anyway, what he said in the um in that interview was when he was diagnosed with PTSD, he got out of the army, he again made that, he was like spent months in fucking bed, he couldn't move like it was, it was his PTSD was crippling and you know, he would go and do something and then his, his brain would just go fucking nuts and he would go back to bed because he couldn't deal with it and he was like, when I decided to change my life and then he went on to this massive spill and I was like, boom, I came back to that and I was like something really powerful. You just said then was when I decided, and what he actually did was he sacrificed his life soul that he had been living. He was like, I'm good mates with Simon, but I can't see him, I can't see those boys, I can't see the guys that I associate going out on the piss with and doing all these things with because I need to fucking sacrifice that to focus on my own health.

And I think that's an important thing is like your environment plays a massive part in um how you're going to move the needle in the right direction and if you're in the wrong environment then sometimes you need to sacrifice that environment and the environment is not just where you live, it's the people you hang out with, its the music, you listen to the podcast, it's everything that you fucking consume, you know, So sometimes you need to sacrifice that environment, put yourself in a better position to then move in the right direction. And he was like, I started doing meditation, journaling training, focusing on nutrition, sleep basically all of the suicide principles and he goes, I didn't see any of the boys for eight months time. But then once I got into a place where I knew I had the tools to be able to use to get myself back into a good place if I did fall off the wagon and start going down that hill again, then you know, then he goes, I called the boys back up, hey lads, let's go out and have a drink, I'm sorry, I haven't seen you guys for eight months, but I've had to focus on myself and blah blah blah. And the boys were just like, we understand man, we're fucking, we're glad that, you know, you spend that time to work on yourself and we're also really fucking happy to see you again, We'd prefer you do that, then never fucking see you again.

100% 100%. Let's go the uh I think it's the power of decision is the big one and I spoke, people don't know how to make a fucking decision anymore, or they need to wait till they're at rock bottom to make that decision and have that catholic moment and sometimes you never make that decision and that will lead to some pretty fucking uh towards set of suicide stuff like this. Some people don't ever have that catholic moment and go fuck, I need to sort my life out. Um Some people don't have that catholic moment until they're already jumping off. Like that guy jumped off the Golden Gate bridge uh and he got halfway down and he went, fuck, I don't want to die and he lived, most people don't hit the water, He woke up and his his big story and he's quite famous, There's a lot of lot of keynote speeches and he's like, mike, I thought like moment was halfway down from the Golden Gate bridge going, I don't want to fucking guy.

Yeah, that's that's the, that's the metaphor. I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't know. But I would assume that the term hit rock bottom comes from digging holes. They dig holes into it until you hit bedrock, right? And most people hit rock bottom and they're like, they've got two options. It's like get out of the hole or fucking pull the pin. And if you dig in too deep and you don't have the tools to get out, the easy option is going to be to pull the pin. So we've got to find a way to get people to make that left right? A choice. I'm going to get better. I'm going to keep getting worse before they're at the bottom of the hole. Well yeah, give them the tools. It's giving people the tools early in life where they might pay them off, where you know, you're sitting at school and you're getting sex ed, right? And they're like, oh, you put a condom on, that's where the vagina is cool. But later on you like, that was fucking handy. Uh at school when you learn these things and you start this max ain't got no babies.

Maybe I'll put it in the wrong, I don't know. Uh but yeah, we get you get these tools to people and and we can start parking ambulances at the top of cliffs instead of at the bottom for for once. Yeah, tools of the education because education is the tools. That's the big chunk. The second big chunk and this is a whole another podcast so we won't go into it too deep. The second big chunk is ownership, right? So you can have all the tools in the world. If you blame everyone else around you, you're not going to fucking use a single one of them because you expect you're in a hole, You expect everyone else to pull you out. And like we are a mental health charity. We are well aware that pulling people out of holes is something that's needed at certain times. But if you're sitting there going through life going it's everyone else's foal. I've been taught this stuff but I'm going to pay it off course Everybody else around me needs to fix shit for me or fix the world. You are fucked. Um You can teach if you have that mentality, you can teach that person, every tool in the world you can lead them to the biggest bucket of water ever.

They are not going to drink it. They needed someone else to drink it for them to and that is the fucking wrong mindset and before I go too far down the rent like I always bring back to this because education is massive. But owning your own situation. I mean every person who, not everyone, most of the people who are respecting life that is that is fundamental to their philosophy, like Jordan Peterson's huge on it, jocko willing wrote a book, extreme ownership or re Marcus still like a lot of his stuff, he gets a bit, we were at the moment but he wrote a book called on the day and it's all about owning your own fucking life. Um I think that that comfort conversation we had earlier, like everybody at the moment in the comfort space wants everything to be easy and if it's not it's someone else's fault and that all the tools in the world can't solve that. The only thing that can solve that is that person taking ownership for themselves and that obviously we get deep into reverts back to blaming government's blaming other people, blaming defense, blaming the war, you can blame all day, that's not going to solve your problem.

All it's going to do is make angrier. You need to own your own fucking path forward. I want to tie that back into what max said earlier about making a decision about, oh mate, fucking halfway down from the Golden Gate bridge and decided that he was didn't want to die. He wasn't ready for that and he wanted wanted to continue living. Like if you don't make it, if you choose not to use these tools that is a decision in itself, not making a decision is a fucking decision in itself. So everything in life is a decision, everything is sacrifice. So if you're saying yes to some things, you're saying no to many others. So we need to prioritize what we're going to say yes to. And that requires making a decision. And sometimes those fucking decisions are hard to make. And this is where a lot of people get caught up as they, you know, Well, it's too hard to weigh up all the cost benefit, um you know, reward ratios, etcetera, etcetera. It's like, you know, if you don't make a decision and you don't want to change anything that's making a decision that you're not going to change and you're going to continue going down that path.

And that goes both ways. Whether you're walking up the hill or you're walking down the hill, you need to make that decision of right. If I'm walking down the hill and fucking I'm spiraling out of control, I need to make a decision to stop doing the things that are sabotaging me that is allowing me to roll down that hill. I need to put the handbrake on. I need to fucking turn around, I need to make the decision to start doing the things that are going to help me move back in the right direction and again shift that needle towards the direction that I want to be moving in, you did right mate? I mean, it's it's the power of decision making is something that is completely lost now, otherwise if you don't make, we're not talking about, I kind of want to quit smoking, I kind of want to quit drinking your wishful thinking. You're, you're dreaming, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna be a millionaire one day. Yeah, fuck so do I. Um that is wishful thinking and dreaming, I had a dream last night, I was a millionaire, you make a decision and then you implement steps to do it without a plan forward and then that starts to become a reality and your first step, even the fitness mate, like guys sitting at home, like not at the peak of their performance, but people who are just sitting at home going like how the fuck am I going to do it and like just put your fucking sneakers on, put your runners on, put them on, you might not make it out the fucking door, puts every wake up and put them on, and then the next day I get to the fucking letter box and that's your first step mate, and then make a cult and make a habit out of it.

There's so many tools that we can use to generate positive habit forming, but make the fucking decision and and that is what am I going to have to get rid of to make the decision and what do I really want out of my life. Yeah, 100% man, that's awesome. That's a great transition into what I want to go into next. Um you guys have been pushing out a lot of um a lot of programs for the app like run across another border and uh that type of stuff. Can you speak to my audience about some of these different challenges that you're putting up on the app and what the goal is with those. Um and you know, how you're kind of building that community and getting a little bit of hide behind what you're doing. Yeah, I mean the challenge is something that, that we, well, I mean to take a step back, we originally, all of our content was video based. Um I do love video content, but there is a large cost to video content were fairly low budget charity. Um and there's also a long time involved in shooting editing, planning all that kind of stuff, videos.

And we built the app to accommodate both video written copy, image is everything and still look sexy. So we got to the point where like, hey, there's a lot of programs that we have in the pipeline that are going to be six months down the track to get high quality video content, whereas people can get value from them today if we just put them out with stills and and and written stuff and a lot of at the moment, a lot of that was around challenges. Um uh well we're very conscious of not being gimmick in marketing and the things that we do, but we also have to meet the market halfway and get them to take, like max said that first step of the letterbox, like we would never preach to someone, hey, if you want to get really fits, you just put sneakers on and walk your letterbox every day. That doesn't seem like the correct um, prescription. However you got to meet people where they're at and then slowly take them on a journey. And challenges are a great way to get people excited about fitness in a small way and then obviously build and build and build it. And, and the term challenge itself means you're stepping out of your comfort zone.

So we're a digital organization. We, we can't at the moment through covid, get people to go to Dakota, which is a very Australian military based tradition around fitness and challenging yourself with a bit of military history and we can't get people climbing Everest. We can't get people to do England to swim the channel, a whole bunch of stuff, but we can do it virtually. So we build a bunch of virtual challenges for the out, there's heaps more coming up. We're gonna slow release them. Uh, and though the intent behind those is to get people excited about their fitness journey to get them started. Uh, and obviously there's a new team function to the app. So we've just released, you can add a team, it's all game. If I now you score earned points for everything you do. Um those points convert over time into climbing ranks like a video game, but they also convert to real world rewards. So at the moment they're all just swiss eight merge discounts, but down the track, obviously they'll convert to anything that we have access to within our partnership network to sell.

And the the idea is you get people give people any incentive you can to get involved in life in a bigger way. Um And if that blurs the boundaries between being a little bit gimmicky, as far as challenge marketing, giving people free stuff too, who gives a fuck if that's what it needs to get them started, then then let's get them started. Um I I guarantee once you do all these programs for for six months, the motivation will not be to get $20 off your next year. It will be because you love how you feel and how your life's kind of progressing. So that's where we're at. We, we've got a lot of new programming coming up, um shooting stuff, a lot of meditation, sleep on your beat stuff, that'll be out in the next few weeks. Um, There's a few bigger projects. We can't go into. All of them are big focus this year is uh, it's heavily researched back. We've got a study on at the moment, uh, in partnership with Newcastle Uni for anyone who is, I know you've got an international audience at the moment.

We're just recruiting Australian military veterans. Um, if you've transitioned out anytime from 1990 I think it is onwards um, Swiss eight dot org slash research, you can sign up for the trial. It's, it's in its simplest form. It is using the app for eight weeks and tracking your mood every day. Um, and there's a bunch of finer details that the psych researcher at Newcastle and you'll go into when you register, but that's a big focus at the moment. And then later in the year we have another research partnership which is a little bit classified at the moment. We're we're building a tech product that will change the face of mental health across the planet. Um, it's using algorithms, machine learning, a bunch of data points that will be funneling in through the app to, I don't know, tell me it's just gonna be, it'll be it's gonna be really good. Watch this space. Well, all right. Uh, yeah, Cool.

Um, so what's the, what's the vision for swiss site over the next couple of years? Like what's the, what's the direction you guys are moving in, I mean, are in state is to build tech products that allow people to live life without falling into fucking pits of depression and anxiety. We are well on the way to to being a big player in that space and that is our goal, three year goal is to get this research, this tech based research done, get it out to everybody around Australia veteran community first, I mean the app itself is open to the public now, um, and then eventually to the world. Um, and that that will become the foundation of what we say it is and then mixes big focus at the moment is coordinating a lot of the events because, and I'll let me go into more detail, but there is in the, in the tax base, like everyone's tried it, facebook, twitter, instagram social networking was originally designed to connect people in the digital age, unfortunately without in person physical connection, we are fucked.

It's made the world worse, realistically connecting the world digitally has disconnected everyone physically. So we're acutely aware of that everything we're building in the tax base needs to be followed up with phase two of how do we get people connected physically? How do we get them outdoors, living life through these principles. Personal growth is a massive one and that's what a lot of these events are going to be based around is finding ways to get people together, doing shit that they've never done before. Learning you finding your hobbies learning new skills and and the object is, is not to create another year. So for a activity, veterans are like people, they're like fingerprints, they're all different and the 3.5 1000 S O. S would continue to balloon to how many millions of people on the planet because everybody is different and they like to integrate and do things slightly differently using events were instead of doing that, bringing people together digitally, bring them together in a contract where they can form new circles, learn new skills and build a new tribe around something that they are interested in.

So we've got to think desert race which is motorcross big enduro race for two days, getting veterans who were X. Vehicle mechanics to come and be the vehicle mechanics, getting X cooks, get the army cooks in like come on mate, you're cooking dinner, get the boys in anyone that's that's really focused on, they love motorbikes and stuff like that. Bang, we're going to do an event for that the next like we got to Sydney to Hobart, people are like sailing, we're gonna teach them to sail um properly rigor boat, There's gonna be a pretty, we're finalizing it all, but we've got some spots in the Sydney to Hobart on one of the boats and well um it'll be a month long lead up training. So these guys are gonna have to get selected to come and jump on uh and be on one of the boats for the city to Hobart stuff like this where we can build a tribe and get people out there digitally connected, we can keep them together and they can build a new community and find a new identity outside of defense that it's not it's not weird. Um not it's not forced and it's not these weird like, hey, we're gonna do, I like, I don't wanna like fuck it.

Like it's not like painting for therapy or something. It's like where boys are like, I'm not gonna fucking sure there might be an option, but its activities where people like hang on, that kind of looks like a bit of fun like you're dead right. And that's what we're trying to challenging, challenging as well. It's got to be challenged. You've got to be a, I mean, the big exciting parties that we're not doing all this in isolation. Either collaboration between other ex service organizations and charities is, is high on our kind of radar. We don't, there is a big problem, especially in Australia. I'm not sure what it's like in other countries, but the broken veteran story came about because too many ex service organizations and they all compete for what they think is a small funding pool and therefore they've got to tell the story to the world that veterans are broken. Give us more money created in fighting creates essays will hate each other and that is a big fucking problem. Um, so us working with other organizations are a self for example. Um, me and swabs and a few of the boys and members of the local Rsl as well. That's the next service organization organization that we're trying to bring together to, to be part of these events.

Whether or not, I think I'm not sure, But definitely with the sailing stuff and then international, I mean, the boys from heads up and fighting minds, I mean that it's not across the line yet, but collaborating with other ex service organizations, I think is a fucking that is the model that we have to adopt. Um, we can't, everyone from the military has some form of hero complex buried away in their psyche somewhere. Everyone wants to save the world. Uh, there's a lot of people out there now. It's breaking the or pretending they've got all the answers to everything and they just realistically want to be the face that everyone looks at and goes, hey, they solved all the problems. That's not how it works. The only way forward in this, in this entire, the only way to solve this problem is by organizations working together, sharing information, building products together that fucking solve problems. Um, so that's a big part of our vision of the future and make this isn't bespoke to veterans. This isn't a veteran problem. These these are all problems that society we, I think veterans have had the lion share of exposure to suicide.

Yes, the numbers are high. I'm not disagreeing with that. But I think these same principles are for society and without you could do this podcast and drop off the veteran peace and it's completely palatable and makes perfect sense to any person, any demographic on the planet. The principles don't change because you went in the army because you wore one uniform or the other. Um I think they were just polarized and exacerbated. You know, leaving the military, you may chip in your tribe and stuff like that is probably more so. But there's other areas. I think it's it's got utility across every aspect and field of life. Mm Absolutely man. And I like what you said before about the cooperation between the different organizations. I think that is super important man and it's fucking critical because no one organization can cover all of the bases. Again, everything is a tool and instead of investing your time energy and effort into covering specific topics and certain things, someone else is already fucking doing that.

Just work with them to you know, push that over line and we should be complimenting each other. All of these different veteran organizations should be complementing each other and we're all working towards the same thing. Like you know, both you boys have been in Afghanistan, you know, it's like, you know, everyone has a role, You've got your fucking infantry soldiers, you've got your snipers, you've got your engineers, you've got your mortars, you've got your signal as you've got your cavalry and you've got all of these different roles, all of these different responsibilities and everyone brings something to the table and together they work as a fucking team to achieve the mission. I think that's absolutely critical and something that has been missing unfortunately in the veteran space and this is why I'm really happy to be working with you guys because you guys think like that as well and you know, I've been asked to be involved with a couple of other organizations as well and um you know, I see all the in fighting and I see um everyone's kind of going up against each other and butting heads and you know trash talking other organizations and shit like that and I just don't want to fucking be a part of that. I want to be a part of the veteran community that are working together to fucking solve these problems that not only veterans are going through but the wider community as well.

100% and I think that is, is fairly similar across our circle of mates. Um no one's really got time to get in the fucking mud fights and to throw shit at each other. I mean we've had, there's certain politicians out there that don't like that, don't really like our attitude towards life and things and, and and people, there is other organizations to throw mud and I think especially with social media these days, it's so easy to get caught in the, hey, I'm going to spend today responding to all this shit or I could spend today focusing on the projects that I've been working on for the last fucking five years and I think that's where we're going to stick to it and that is the mentality of yourself, all of our mates. It's like if we want to achieve big things, then we're going to cop some haters, but I don't have a minute of my fucking life to waste fighting that shit. So, and if people listen to the hate and they judge us, we have, we've lost fans and followers through some of the mud that's been thrown, but they'll come back eventually. And if they don't, who gives a fuck mate, like there's bigger, bigger problems to solve than um answering hate mail.

Yeah, if you try and keep everyone happy, you're not going to please anybody is no one like, you just got to, you just got to do your own thing made. And the people that are on board, the people, the people that are part of your fucking tribe, they'll become loyal followers, man, They'll become fucking loyal to the tribe and they're gonna be pushing that message out to anyone who will listen, you know, and that's that's a that's a big thing for me, man. Um Love this conversation labs, is that if people want to get behind Swiss Eight uh and throw some sponsorship money your way and help you guys get these different programs and different projects off the ground. Where can they find you guys and how can they donate? Um Swiss Eight dot org is our website uh there's a few sub links that you can go to. I mean there's uh the think race is the one that we're raising money for now is to get this team of veterans to to the think um which is one of the projects or just the general donation portal, Which every $120 we raise will fund an app user for a year. And that's kind of the goal.

The baseline goal for us is to keep everybody using the app for free forever. Uh and then obviously it's always started on instagram. All of our socials are around suicide. And then instruction sold separately is our podcast which which you've been on yourself. Which the organization is very professional, the podcast. Also professionals got a different name so that we can be fucking real like we um we can get a little bit looser and and talk the way that veterans Day do and kind of be ourselves and instructions sold separately. Kind of is the place to go if you want to hear the real talk. Yes, like really therapy session mate. 100% 100%. And like I said, I'm most episode is going to be out by the time I dropped this one, but I'm definitely gonna have an introduction to that. A coarse language here. If you get offended easily, probably shouldn't be listening to this one. A Yeah, yeah, it's all good. No, that's that's the comment that comes in a lot as well as like a great content.

You fucking swear a lot. Well that's why I am not sorry awesome boys. It's been an absolute pleasure having a chat to you and I wanted to get you guys on so um my audience could hear the faces behind um the organization that I'm putting my name to um and it's an absolute honor for me to be a part of Um the Swiss eight brand moving forward. We love having you made your knowledge in health and fitness is obviously second and none and we're on the same page as far as life and how we, how we actually, we love having you as an ambassador, love you made chairs, cheers boys And there we have it. My interview with the boys from Swiss eight Adrian Soda and Anthony Mixner. Adrian came to me a couple of years ago when Swiss eight was just in its first concept and he asked me to come on board, he explained what he was doing and his vision, the direction that he wanted to move the app in and the Swiss eight as a whole organization And I was 100% behind what he was doing and I dealt with some of the things that we've spoken about in this episode as well as a lot of my mates.

a lot of my mates are stealing, still dealing with ptsd anxiety, depression, things like that and this is an ongoing crisis in the Western world. So, um absolutely honored to be a part of the SwiSS Eight team and work for them as an ambassador. And I will be pushing their brand to anyone who's going to listen and use these tools so we can hopefully save lives and help people be better at life. So, any five star ratings and reviews are much appreciated guys. If you really got something out of this conversation, make sure you pass it off to your friends and family, much love peace.