yo what is up guys, welcome back to the live transform podcast, I'm your host, Sean Cobra, This is the second episode of 2022. I hope everyone enjoyed last week's episode which was my best of coaches corner episodes in this episode. I'm going through my best of my client corner episodes where I've had discussions, coaching calls with my online clients and they've actually allowed me to record these conversations so I can share with you guys. So um speaking with three of my clients that I've had over the course of the last year, Damien Gilbert, who is a veteran of the U. S. Military, was blown up in Iraq, um dealt with some ptsd anxiety, depression, lost a couple of his mates to suicide, lost a couple of his mates on that deployment and last year he actually lost his father to Covid. So we had a great conversation around the tools that he's implemented the principles that I've taught him how he's tweaked and adjusted those things and how important mindset is to allowing you to live your best life.

Alright, let's get this episode underway. I've got a good job at the moment, you know, I had just got an officer of the month at the police department, so I was a cocky asshole man and it just hits you, you're sitting down one day and you break down crying and you have an episode because you're drunk and you miss your buddies and somebody else commit suicide and somebody else does this. So I would tell her all these things and she told me, he said, look you know what you need to do. You need to replay those conversations that we've had about Gonzo Pass and, and about your other friends, You know, committed suicide. You need to hear yourself. You know, you pay attention to what you're saying and you need to be how you're saying it exactly. And you need to be alone, how you say it, how you think, when you say things are important and be alone, don't depend on nobody. The moment you learn how to be by yourself and be happy by yourself and you work on yourself, it's the moment that somebody else comes into your life, not to give you happiness, but to add onto that bullshit.

You know what I mean? Like we're doing this together, man suck. Yeah, you don't complete me. I don't complete you. No, you're your own woman and man. Oh man, we've both been through the wringer life has put us in a way here now. What good was I doing to people around me? Just not girlfriends but friends in general. If I was always thinking about myself, if I don't always pull out the whole, oh, my friend died card. Oh my feet. Oh my feet hurt. So I can't run. I can't walk my feet hurt. I need to go home and the police department, I did a few times like, hey, my feet are purple. I will get holes in them. Don't get yellow. I said, I gotta go home instead of just sucking it up. It's not gonna change, also is going to be in pain. Um So the therapist man throughout the years, she's told me, she goes, you know what? You look happy man? I'm like, what do you mean? She goes, we've been working together. I had a conversation with her on the phone due to Covid. She asked me on the phone and I was like, I said on the phone, um, choose to sound happy. Mr Gilbert, I'm glad I told her. I said, well man, this is going on, this is going on at work.

You know, my father was still alive. I have not talked to her since he passed. Oh, I was like, I'm in a good mental state. I'm working with a buddy of mine. He's helping with my fitness. My overall health is doing well. I'm back in school. I finished school here in july, which I hate, but you know, I gotta, I gotta get it done. And she's saying she goes, why do you think that is? So I told her I was like, hey, you were right. I was trying to fill up a big hole in me that with the company of others that will always make me want to be with them, but not in a healthy way because they're not me. They haven't experienced what I've experienced. So, I started working on me, started doing what you told me, I started doing what my boy Sean was telling me start doing all these little things man and keeping in touch with people that I want to keep in touch with. So she was so happy man. She's glad that I've never been medicated on antidepressants. Well I did once when I got out but I dropped them and so she's happy that I take this the more natural way on things, on recuperating and talking to people about how my body works.

You know, you a what, stretching what I do because when you do all those things man, For somebody that's known me when I was 22 when I first got out of the army to now And for her to tell me in 10 years, this is the first time she notices a change in my voice. She notices a change of how I say things and what I tell her how I tell her. She goes, it's fucking great man. You are not the only one, but there's people out there that still do this. So if you fight your your traumas, your inner demons, you know the bad thoughts, the alcohol man, You learn how to live in moderation, You can live a good life. Oh, you have to be rich and that helps, you know, talking to someone. Therapy helps man. Um fitness helps your mental health is like you said, it's the most important thing. You and you see others and you change your view on others. You don't look at other people as weak, You don't look at other people as well, you're sucking whining bitch, sometimes I do at work, but sometimes it's just minimal stuff.

But then you also realize man, maybe this is a traumatic event for this guy who knows you know, so you learn how to be a little more fair and neutral to what goes on around you and you put that military mind set aside or you use it to your advantage, you're disciplined, you seek for help Your humble man that ship humbles most people. Will put put a bunch of veterans that stay in shape and do this in the room and they think there's some arrogant motherfucker's 100% bro because it reflects on their insecurities if you're a secure person and you accept your bad ship and you're working on your mental health and you're working on your fitness. If I see somebody else that's fit, that's got proper posture man. That when he talks he looks at you in the eyes and he shakes your hand is firm, I'm not thinking he's a cocky dude. I'm thinking man this month marks a stand up guy and I'm gonna hang around this pitch, this motherfucker is is comfortable in his own skin, he knows who he is, that he understands what his values are and he knows the sort of people he wants around him, 100% bro, men or women.

You know I've met a lot of women that are super, super sure of themselves. That have been through a lot of bullshit man, but there's strong working women and yeah I would rather work. Yeah I would rather when if you see somebody like that around you man Yeah that's my looking woman bro, you know like nothing's been given and if it has been given she's earned that sh it and she understands that it's a confidence thing, its not being arrogant, it's being confident, it's understanding that life can be really shitty but it can be beautiful and most of the time it's fucking beautiful, it puts heaps of people around you that just make you want to be a better version of yourself. You know you meet that one girl, that damn girl you squat more than me. Yeah so it's fucking dope bro, you know? Yeah that's sick man. Um something I want to start winding up the episode with is something that you've mentioned numerous times was the mindfulness and managing your thoughts because at the end of the day man everyone turns their lights off and they go to bed and it doesn't matter what you have in your life material bullshit.

Doesn't matter how big your fucking houses, how many cars you have, whether you have a swimming pool you know how big your family is, how much money is in your bank for your portfolio. None of that sh it matters. The only thing that you're left with is your own thoughts are those thoughts, are those thoughts serving you or are they sabotaging you? You know now you've you've mentioned numerous times that you're not a robot. You're you know, you go through these emotions and emotions are just that they're fleeting. They come and go, right. So, the whole idea of mindfulness is being able to take note of these emotions and then let them pass. Don't attach any meaning to different feelings. Okay? And then you take that um Pragmatic approach where you go, all right, all of these things came up, I meditated for 10 minutes or whatever. You know, I didn't dwell on anything. All these thoughts came through my mind. I didn't attach any meaning to them. I let them pass. And then you reflect on that and we'll talk about an A R in a moment. We reflect on that and then we decide what we're going to act upon and we decide what we ignore.

And you know that I think that's really powerful man. Have you? What's your experience been with that? And how has that changed your mindset before? Before we linked up? I like to think that I have my ship together and my thoughts will come up and they will come up randomly. Right? And then there was some dark fucking thoughts bruh. But I knew how to shut them off. I just go to sleep dude, just close your eyes, just pop a melatonin or two or three, see what happens and hey man whatever was available to feel good a little bit and you know I I started thinking that I will wake up super anxious, I would wake up and the first thing I would do is look at my phone because I didn't want to miss something from someone and or another, one of my friends committed suicide. That sh it sucks bro when they call us again, one of the boys, no luck themselves, you're like buck, why don't you, why don't you call me?

Maybe I was asleep, let me not sleep. Do you think man am I okay? Am I gonna one day fucking look at my block and say you know what bro join them, you know what I mean? You sir you fund, your mind will follow but your surroundings are important I believe and the pillars that you have of life and friendship, friendship, something that we take care of. We don't, we take for granted a lot of times, you know people think you need a friend there, I think you know our relationship is dope because when my dad died we talked about my dad and then we can still talk about you know your dive, you're diving, you're sucking playing tenants? Never in a million years without picturing telling tenants. Um so it's cool because we're in different countries, you're always traveling, I'm always traveling the same thing with all my other friends in Australia and Ecuador in the States. I got one of the rules. Good friends in texas. I can talk to about these thoughts to certain people. So I began to work with you man and I, whenever I go to bed now I'm having a thought creep up.

It's usually on a certain date, right? It's out man. Secretary, right, anniversaries. These are triggers and before I would cry, throw a pity party, just blame everybody fucked self sabotage, self destruct. Whereas, and I see a lot of my friends doing that now man, a lot of guys that are serving through that now and I see their lives and then I feel bad but I can't, I can't intervene in your life if you don't want to help yourself. I'm not that's not my job, you know? But I see where I've come to at since seeking for help since doing this things that the government, the army gives us, we just don't take advantage of it man because we don't like we said, we don't want to be seen as weak. So when this starts creeping in and now, oh my God Damian get your ship together bro. If I need to, I will stand up, walk around a little bit in my room. It's kind of dark, you know, I turn a little diffuser on with all these little essential oils.

I don't know what the funk I'm mixing, but it smells good and it calms me down. Yeah, it calms me down. I you know just probably some white noise and just think what, why am I thinking? This is an anniversary, if it's an anniversary, how are his parents? You know Howard johnson's parents do it and my present in their life and my only present in their life when it's their son's anniversary. No, so those things man calm me down because in a way I can bring my friend back, but if I'm not taking care of me, I'm down the drain, there's so many and not just veterans bro, I think a lot of people suffer from a lot of mental health. All you gotta do now is go on instagram and if if you're a guy or girl, whatever you're going to see somebody with a better body than yours so that could just be enough to get you depressed and you don't take, you know what I mean? Like you don't take your mental health to that extent and if you let your mind play that game and play that role then you're gonna believe you're less than that person that you're gonna believe, you don't deserve to be alive and you're gonna believe that but who am I to judge those people, right?

So when they creep up to me, I'm like nah, not today dude, I got so much to live for, I got so much to look forward to man that I've done so much work on myself that I will not give in to those memories, I will not give in to those nightmares, I will not give in to those bad thoughts because I have a good fucking life bro you know it's where I'm at right now, it's dope, I have good friends, health, my family you know even with my dad going I'm grateful, you know what I mean? Like the the job that I have so yeah man when they pop up I look at my life that's all I do, I said look at all the work, you don't look at what you've been through, look at all the people, you've got the chance to meet everyone even if it's just for a day that was a cool fucking person you know don't give in to that that it's a bad moment, it's not a bad life, it's just a bad moment man so I put that sh it away I breathe, I you know sometimes I was so dumb I would start doing push ups, I'm like this bringing my heart rate up you idiot.

But then again adding stress on top of stress exactly which is why I reached out man because I was like I gotta figure it out damn I can sleep for real so help bro when I asked that and so yeah when they come up I'm man like I always say man I'm forever grateful dude because I can look at things differently man, I was able to look at things differently even when relationships go south now man, okay, you are here to teach me something, Hey, I was there to teach you something ah and past relationships, you know, you made me reflect that it was me. So now I can go on to be a better person to understand that we all have this ship, but if we don't work on it man and it's great that you, you mentioned earlier, you guys are expanding to not just military personnel that you're expanding. I think everybody should have, you know, be knowledgeable for cognizant of the swiss a thing because usually you seek the coach or the program, the program doesn't seek you.

So if you have these tools out there for people and you make a note for them man, it's, we all go through a wild roller coaster and in our mind if you can, if you can understand how your mind works and you can understand you're going to have those bad thoughts man. You know, there's sometimes that just images pop in my head of funked up bodies and Shit but I'm like, hey that was 10 years 11 years ago bro, let that ship go. Don't, don't let that be your present or your future mm hmm Yes, it was a part of, it was a part of your history. It is a part of you know the events that shaped the person that you are. But they add to your character, they don't define your character. Yeah. And once you get that under control you realize you're you're just another person here man. If you do your part, your your your your act of kindness can be on to somebody else and then that person passes it on to somebody else and then it's a beautiful thing man.

Which is why I think social media, social media is nice if used properly. Social media is nice. Yeah, it's a tool bro. Yeah. Somebody just said then brought up something that I heard recently on a podcast or read or something like that. Um but the the guest was saying um you know the difference between external validation which you spoke about earlier where you're filling the void with people with girls with alcohol blah blah blah blah. Like if you're externally validated as opposed to internally validated. Like internally validated people are those that can go to sleep at night and go, you know I did the best that I could today And I take the boxes I take the winds off the list. I moved myself in the right direction. I'm comfortable with who I am, I'm stable with my emotions. Um you know I can be at my best so That I can help other people be at their best. That's internally validated people but externally validated people are driven by um you know those external things.

So if I meet, if you're externally validated and you meet you know 10 people you see 10 people throughout the day but they're having a ship day and they don't validate you, they don't compliment you that now fox you up and affects your day, right? So excellently validated. People are constantly like you know at the whim of everyone else's emotions. That was my big thing, my big takeaway from everything has been, it's been good to one Accept Life Lessons, stop blaming other people, worked on my insecurities, worked on my flaws ah and realizing that there's a lot of ship that I don't know man that's that's sucking powerful man. There's so much bro when we talk like fun dude I thought I knew that but you put me over here ship hits the family could be in my truck ready to go and for three minutes or less, you know I mean I could but that's not learning how to switch on, switch off.

Exactly, that's not like when I'm home I'm good man, I'm chilling, I'm relaxed, I've learned how to do that, I've learned how to do that. Um I'm still learning which is why I love this um the asking questions man, I'm I'm learning them Even in people from different cultures, Ramadan starts April 13 yeah we have to learn how to adapt, we're in their country, I'm a I'm a foreigner here, I'm not a presence of force and I can't act like an asshole, You know, even though I'm the security element even though we have you know whatever, I still have to be respectful, I still have to be like but you know when you're a young guy, you're in your early teens, early 20s, you don't give a funk, you don't think about any of that. We've all been there. Yeah exactly. You your mind's elsewhere you think you know to hit our age and you're like damn. Damn. That's the saying that everybody has uh I could go back with what I know now my life would be totally different but I'm good where I'm at man, I'm glad I seeked out, I'm glad I reached out, I'm glad we never lost touch even with the people of Tiger man, I talked to a few once in a while and it's cool because I see it with their life is that man if they seem happy but even though they seem happy, I also understand that they've also had ship days.

Um So I'm 100% content with this wild fucking journey from getting blown up shot at and being a cop and running after people and attack him ah to now which I'm in the same element as I was. It's just a lot more call, you know, we're not during conflict all the time or rarely any conflict to be honest with you, the job just sounds good on paper but it is an important role So but there's yeah, the thing with that is like, yes, you might not be fucking in, in you know troops in contact every day, but there's always the potential for that to happen. So you always need to be on high alert, you need to be ready for when the ship does hit the fan because that's where issues start coming in is where people get complacent and they were like oh well this is you know, this is, this is just how it is, it's a pretty cruzi job, blah blah blah and yes, it might be cruising at times, but there's gonna be some stage where you need to be able to fucking switch that warrior mindset on. Exactly, you gotta learn how to, you can't be that guy all the time, you know, nobody wants to be around the guy that he lives in his past and talks about how you should be in the army cool story bro, it's good to seek, it's good to seek help and um like I said, dude being here, working here, having this talk with you um it's crazy because I'm always implement what I learned and I've gotten to the point where I'm gonna feel that requires me to be humble, I'm gonna feel that doesn't require me to be an arrogant asshole ah and this teaches you that how you treat yourself, what you do with you are you disciplined enough to put your phone away for a few hours a day.

Are you disciplined enough to eat? What's right for you most of the time? That's how you treat you, man. That's what people say. Self love. Self care, that bullshit. You've got to show that it's easy to say, I love you. It's hard to show that ship. So once you show it, you know, that's a great point, man, people say self love, self care, I fucking give myself whatever I want, and it's like, that's not self love, that's not self care, that's self indulgence. You know, self love. Self care is fucking like restricting the things that are fucking easy and giving yourself a little bit of adversity every now and again, whether it's through training or whether it's through fasting or whether it's through digital detox is or removing, you know, those fucking nice, comfortable things in your life for a period of time, so that when you do start using those things again, you fucking appreciate it and you're grateful for it. That is self love. That is self care in my mind. The next guest is Mark Tickle, who was one of my online clients for a period of time. We're still in contact to this day, midway through last year.

He actually wrote me an incredible testimonial, which I put into a standalone episode titled. This stopped me in my tracks, which I'll have linked in the show notes that basically told me that I had saved his life. And um he was really grateful for, you know, finding my content, finding the podcast etcetera. And I'm just extremely grateful for him entrusting me in the process to guide him to bettering his life. So now I'm going to share the conversation that I had with him around journaling and how the tools that we work through, how he implemented those tools and principles throughout the rest of his life, I also implemented a bit more journal writing because I felt that that was a good way for me just to write things down because only one thing sean that I did nearly go a little bit back on and you picked up and that's why I freaking love you. One thing I nearly went back on was the one pattern of mine I've noticed and this is from journaling.

One pattern of mine I've noticed is when things go bad, I tend to hide away a little bit and not talk and that's just my way of dealing with it and that's okay, relatively, but it's not healthy at the same time and you picked up straight away on that and and actually only you are my misses the only two people no one else kind of picked up on it, but I think speaking with you straight away at least got me to express some sort of feelings and get some emotion out and then I just wrote the rest down. I just found that was pretty therapeutic you know. So yeah, yeah, that was, that was going to be my next question man was you know how do you feel when you're writing things down? How long you've been journaling for first? How do you feel when you start writing things down? You did say it's therapeutic right? 100%. And it's putting, it's like it's putting the words into action also as well. I mean I write things down before I had all these values in my head and my goals in my head but I never used to put pen to paper with it and I think just the visual aspect when you actually like I mean I'm writing stuff down all the time you know and I never used to until I met you actually and um and I think just looking at it, looking at the words, there's something powerful about it and it's really hard to explain that to someone.

The only way I can tell someone is to give it a try, you just got to give it a shot and then you'll understand you know? But I think looking at them words and then I might like for example I had to look over some stuff I wrote the other day just just today from a few days ago and it also gave me a bit of a benchmark to see, I've actually improved just in the last couple of days because I was like ships, some of them some of them things I wrote down were a bit dark and then I am not dark, dark but they were just a little bit dark and then I had to look at it and I don't feel as as dark like that as I did just a couple of days. So it's a good gauge, it just makes me, it shows me that I'm moving forward if it does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, absolutely man, and going back to writing things down, I think the powerful thing about this is that's the first action step Right? Like your thoughts are always well I think we have like 60, thoughts come into our brain every single day as a human being. So you know, we can't process all of those things. So for me like I'm constantly writing as well man, like I've got my notepad here jotting down things that you're saying so I can come back to it and touch on.

But you know, I've got my boards right in front of me when I'm riding down like what I do on monday on Tuesday and Wednesday thursday, friday saturday sunday and then I've got my monthly focus, then I've got my weekly focus, then I've got my personal goals, my top priority, my priority my errands, my work goal is my top priority, my priority my errands. And then on the other white board I've got I've broken up my whiteboard into quadrants and the top left quadrant is urgent and important and then the next quadrant is important, but not urgent. The bottom quadrant is ah not important, but urgent. And then not urgent. Not important. Right? And like that's what I'm doing every single day. I'm jotting things down. I'm doing it at the start of the week and then I'm going back and I'm reviewing man and going, all right, how much of that ship did I get done? How many of those wins did I take off the list? And I think writing things down takes things from being a thought into becoming action because that is literally the first action step is, hey, I've got this rattling around in my brain.

I'm going to do a little brain dump, I'm going to get it out of my mind. I'm going to put it on paper, that's the first action step, man. And once you take that first action step, it's much easier to then take that second action step. And it's also much easier to start organizing things because you're looking at it and you're like, all right, well this is again, tying back into your hierarchy value. You're looking at everything. You've just jotted down and then you're looking at your values and you're going, where does this fit in? Alright? This fits in here, This fits in here, This fits in here. This fits in here. Where can I slot that into my day, where can I slide that into my week and something you said before about the meditation, I was like yes, you were sleeping in a little bit longer, going to bed a little bit earlier and you actually said unfortunately, I was like, man, that's fucking brilliant, that's a great adjustment, right? You're not getting up and doing your training, your body needs that sleep, you know, your sleep is probably going to be a little bit broken because your mind is going to be all over the place. And this is where again writing things down before bed, do a brain dump, then do some meditation that's going to bring you back into that parasympathetic state, allow you to get to sleep a little bit better and then you typically have a better sleep a little bit longer sleep when your body's under stress, man, you need that extra recovery right then.

You know, you're not going through your full meditative practice, but you're still getting some form of meditation is in because you know how important it is that meditation, that focused meditation where you're focusing on your breath or you're focusing on your thoughts or whatever your your your target is for that meditative practice is driving attention which then carries over into everything else that you're doing in your day. Yeah, 100%. Actually, that's something a point that I wanted to bring up as well, which I've done a bit differently because usually my meditation when I do, when I do that, I actually like to put some candles out and I have a nice little, have my little cushion that I sit on and I put some guided meditation music and that's just how I like to do it. But what I did to adjust things around in the last week is what you sort of do I was doing in the car when I was driving, which I'd never really sort of done before, and I can tell 100% how much difference it makes because I've got a smart watch, so I I looked at my heart rate and my goodness, like I mean I know this stuff you taught me this stuff before, but I just just just sort of refining that and I also feel as well, right, just, just going back to the writing things down as I believe, that's made a big impact on my anxiety because I think when I haven't written things down, everything just feels like it's so clustered in my head and I can't, like you said, I can't start, I don't have a starting point anywhere.

So I think from an anxiety point of view, it's just a Dude, it's just a jumble when it's like when it's 70,000 thoughts in your head, like that's all, it's all jumbled up man, it's the fucking jigsaw puzzle with pieces all over the place, right, the point of writing things down is to start laying those jigsaw pieces out and then putting them where they go, and some things you're going to action straight away and other things you're like, okay, that's not, again, that's like that's important, but it's not urgent, I can put that off for a month, you know, and it's just literally like organizing, it's organizing your thoughts, man, it's taking those thoughts, putting it on paper and then being able to like slot them in, whether that's I need to do this today, I need to do this this week, I need to do this this month, I need to do this by the end of this year, which gives you clarity, right? Which then reduces anxiety, it's amazing the difference it makes, and and it's funny because it's just how you, I've joked around with you about this so many times.

It's it's simple, but only once you explain it, it seems simple after that, you know, before you explain that and and I mean I look at this now and I'm like, jesus, I try not to think of wasted years because it's built me to who I am today, and that's why I try to look at it right, but I do kick myself a little bit going, jesus, I wish I had learned this ship a long time ago, you know, and it would have, it would have, would have, would have saved me a lot of time, 100% bro. And this is, this is why I coach the way that I coach, right? It's because I've fucking learned all these things the hard way myself, right? Or I've picked up on things that all my clients are going through man, you know, and that's why I started the podcast to get this information out to people to say, hey, you know what, you can organize your life in a manner that's going to allowed to decrease anxiety, depression, look forward to putting processes in place on a day to day basis. That's going to get you living the life that you want man.

And it's not like a magic pill. You don't just start doing one thing and it's like fixes everything right. Like how long have we been working together? Yeah, that's right, That's very true. And I think also as well as I've noticed the thing as well is how interchange interchange the word how much this supplies two different aspects. So it applies to my training and then it also applies to my personal life and then I can switch these principles around to my work life as well because that's something that I've noticed massively in the last two weeks, even though I've been going through all this sh it I the work's been pretty stressful, but I've had a lot of good, good should happen at work and my boss even pulled me aside and went whatever you're doing, just keep doing it because I kind of haven't told him what's been going on in my personal life because I just trying to I'm trying to keep it a bit separate if you know what I mean. But the results are coming in work wise, so it doesn't, I think when I first started with you it was all revolved around training for me at the very start. That's what I had in my head not realizing that these principles, they're relatable to all other aspects.

So that's what I try to do now sean, I try to try to adapt this, the best I can given the different situations and the different the different pillars I got going on in my life at the same time. Next up is scott Donnelly who is a personal trainer himself, he has his own business, he works with a number of his own clients. So he reached out to me and wanted to come on board as a mentee in somewhat of a mentor program. So I basically brought him on as an online client but taught him what he needed to know to then be able to pass on to his clients and something that we spoke about that most listeners of the podcast will understand is heart rate variability and we discussed how he uses heart rate variability to then adjust and make decisions to his day to day in regards to training, nutrition, stress management, um sleep hygiene etcetera, etcetera, enjoy. I was just a trainer. I wasn't a coach, you know, and it was like simply just, you know, these are the exercises, I'm gonna give you a sweat out and now it's just changed my whole philosophy and especially like coming to you, the big thing for me now, it's just the HR V man that's like, like we've been speaking about it for weeks, but it's such a game changer and I've, and the more I go into it, the more I do it every day, the more I learn about it, you know, and the more I learn about my body, like, you know, for example, um this week didn't feel that great makeup in.

I'll tell you what, once you hit 30 it's just, it's just, I'm getting sick. Things are just happening left right and center. Like it just never happened to me before. But let's let's let's talk about that for a second because like why? You know, you go, that never happened to me before. Like dude, when you're like 18 1920 you're like going out and getting funked up on the weekends, like you're working throughout the week, like you're spending all your money, like you've got no cares in the world, but you don't have a mortgage, you don't have a car, you don't have fucking family and like kids and wife and shipped to look after bro. Like your cares are fucking zero, your fox zero right? As you get older man. Like you start adding these things to your life bro and life does get more and more complicated, right? So we need to try and um minimize those complications and those stresses man. And this is where you know paying attention to your waking heart rate, your blood pressure, your heart rate variability like comes into play man because then you're like all right cool, this is I've got all this ship going on in my life, that's all stress man. And that fucking stress adds up. And if I'm not dealing with it then and I'm going in training after I've had a hard day at work and I'm you know, Burning the candle at both ends and I'm not getting enough sleep and my nutrition is not 100% on point and you know, I'm not focusing on recovery and stress management ship, like you know then I'm going to get sick, then I'm going to start picking up injuries and things like that because your body can only take so much stress.

So that's a great point mate. Sorry to cut you off there. What are some of the what are some of the things you've picked up on in the last couple of weeks with the HR V. Because it is something that we've been touching on every single time. Like every every coaching call. Yeah, no for me like it was against one getting the understanding of it but now that I've got the understanding, it really does tell you before like you get sick like I've been getting sick a lot recently and I don't really think I've been stressing too much but you know there's certain aspects of things that I do think about going to work and I probably haven't been eating as good as I normally should but like for me before I I was getting sick it would tell me and then literally the next day I'd be I'd be sick and like one for me this this week was I just didn't feel right for about two days and I thought you know what, I'm not going to go to the gym, I'm just gonna just gonna have it off. And then there was one day where I just really didn't feel right like normally I get up I'm ready to go, I'll do whatever I like you know if I've got task and things like to do I'll be on it to get it done. I just didn't even feel like doing that.

I just didn't want to get outside and I was like you know like this is I need to just have a full day of rest the next day. I was up about seven on my readiness morning readiness which wasn't too bad but I was still on the parasympathetic side and that's what it was all week and basically saying hey mate you need to have a rest, you were forcing you to have a rest you because you haven't been able to you haven't been doing the right things in order to get yourself back up to the baseline. And then this morning our work up I took my readiness and said 10 ready to go, felt great. I had a good session all day, I've been unreal but for the whole week it wasn't just my physical ability, it was my mental and my mood mate and like you know and that was going into just being able to socialize with people like when my mood is down and I'm not feeling right, I don't really want to speak to people, I'm more happy to see myself you know just doing the job on my own. But today I was more than happy just running around being my normal self like being that joker because I was good and and and it gave me that data to say that and and in the days prior it gave me the data to say hey you're not right.

Um And that's exactly why I felt that way. So like rather than me going hey like something's wrong with me, why am I you know is there is there something mentally wrong? Not wrong with, you know it's just because my body is telling me hey you need to rest so that you can be optimal um in all facets of life. You know whether that's physical whether that's mental all of it, if that makes sense to you man? Absolutely mate I love that man, I love that and you know that data is it's gold man. Like the numbers don't lie right? You know you can and this is why this is why I like the majority of my clients like I get them tracking these data points right? Like these basic health markers. Because you know if you go to a doctor man, what's the first thing a doctor does any GDP right? They're gonna fucking typically take your pulse rate and your blood pressure right? And it's like oh your blood pressure is high, why is that? And then they start asking well they don't ask questions, they go take this pill but you know the um functional medicine is becoming more and more prominent and functional medicine practitioners, they look at these numbers and they go oh your blood pressure is a little bit high.

What could that be pointing to? That's a symptom of something, right? That's your body telling you something? All right, what's going on? And then we start asking questions around how's your sleep? How's your nutrition, how's your training, how's your stress management has your hydration levels? Like are you deficient in any micro nutrients? Are you getting enough energy and you know how much sunshine are you getting blah blah blah blah blah. Like those numbers are literally fucking telling you that something's up man and when you when you have that data then it gives you the information to then make an informed decision on how you're going to conduct yourself that day in terms of all of those things and as you said man, you know your HIV is a little bit lower your in a parasympathetic state. You know your body is under stress. Sweet, have a little bit of an extra sleep in, get to bed a little bit earlier, make sure that you prioritize, you know hydration and good quality nutrition. So you can give your body the nutrients it requires to get back to homeostasis or baseline.

Exactly and you need that data to know that hey I need to start eating but I need to rest more. Whereas before I used to just think I was just being weak today, you know like and I'd get the ships with myself as a young bloke like you go and then I couldn't bench what I did the week before. But it's because my body was trying to tell me something but until you know that until you have an understanding of that and until you get the data you don't know what to do about it. You know, it's like a like I'm a truck mechanic by trade right? So you know if I if an engine sounds like there's something wrong with it, I'll listen to it okay I sort of know some certain things but until you plug it in sometimes you need to plug it in, everything is electronic these days and it gives you the data of, hey this these, this cylinder is not firing properly. So then you know where to go to. It's the same sort of thing with the body and like using the HIV is the markers that we, that we can use but we don't use them, we don't have the understanding of it. So like, you know, as much as I've been in a training my whole life, I've only just figured this out now, you know, and I'm and I'm almost 30. So like if I had known this 10 years ago would have been, you know, life changing.

But for me now it's probably a good time because this is the time now, as I've said to you, I'm starting to get sick a bit more. I'm starting to get these little injuries. So by having this data now I can start to adjust my way of training. Um whether that's, you know, going hard at it one day, then the next day having to teeter off that because I know, hey, if I do two or three days in a row, I know I'm going to get sick, it's just, it's just the way my body is working at the moment, you know, or is it that way because I'm not, you know, getting the right nutrients and vitamins in, you know, I'm pretty good with my diet, but I might be lacking in something that I don't know and if it keeps happening I've got the data to go, okay let's change this up then then I train a bit harder. I don't get sick as often A that was that was the thing that I needed to do or adjust you know? So yeah that's that's been the big, big game changer mate for me and the and the biggest yeah And there we have it guys, the second episode of the lifted and perform podcast done and dusted for 2022. I want to shout out to my clients, Damien, Mark and scott for allowing me to record those episodes and share it with podcast listeners for your listening pleasure.

Final point before I sign off is that I did create a facebook forum last year for podcast listeners. A number of guests. A number of people I've interviewed. People in the health and fitness industry are part of the forum so you guys can ask them questions. I get my content for Q and A. Sessions. I share other content, private content etcetera etcetera in that forum. So all you need to do to get into the forum is leave me a five star rating and review, take a screenshot of that and send it to my instagram at coach underscore codes ko bes then go onto facebook search for live train perform, request access, answer the questions and I will provide you access there right now. I'm only allowing people that are leaving their five star rating and review in. But in the future whilst I build out the next phase of my business over the next couple of months, I'm going to start requesting for payment to get into that forum. So anyone that's in that forum will basically be grandfathered in before I start asking for payment to get in there.

And people in that forum will also get discounts on my new training programs and books and things like that that I'm building out over the next couple of months. So watch your space. Five star ratings and reviews are much appreciated guys. If you share it on your stories, please make sure you tag me so I can share it as well. Much love peace.