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Tribe. Routine. Identity. Purpose. A Swiss 8 Update.

by Shaun Kober
May 9th 2022
01:21:56
Description

Swiss 8 is a proactive mental health model designed to provide the tools required to deliver high-quality content around their 8 pillars of health and wellness, to allow you to be "Better At L... More

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 going to follow me down the road? Keep demanding more of yourself 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 and 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 our 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 money. That's that's sort of what life is all about. You know, I 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, yo what is up guys?

Welcome back to the live train performed podcast? I'm your host, Sean Cobra and joining me today is the team from Swiss eight. We have Adrian Sutter and Anthony Mixner, How are you boys? Good mate, good. Alright, it's been a while since we've had a conversation for my podcast. You guys had me on your podcast recently instruction sold separately where we went through my journey coaching at tiger, going over to Russia, coaching peter yarn being in the corner, so on so forth, I'll have that episode linked in the show notes. I did actually share that episode recently for my podcast as well. Um but that was a great conversation. There's a lot happened since I've had you guys on my podcast last so I just want to check in with you guys, see where you're at sea, what swiss aid is doing share with the audience um you know where you guys are at the moment, your vision, the direction that you're moving in and how they can potentially help you. So um just quickly for any new listeners that are tapping into the podcast, can you give me a brief introduction to yourselves and what swiss aid is?

I'll go first. Do you want me to go first max? I'm Adrian, I found this was obviously um ex ex military, ex army like you boys. Uh and yeah, like any new listeners, unfortunately when um I left the military, a lot of my mates took their own lives um and it's a bit of a problem in the veteran community suicide. So I myself mix and feel the other lads wanted to do something about it, we started Swiss A which is a proactive mental health charity run by veterans using veteran lived experience to try and solve some real world problems. Short and sharp mate, love it. Let's make the story is very similar. I mean it's all about 17 years old joining the army looking for that tribe. So a lot of these things that you'll hear us talk about through the show is often lived experience and these sort of things that we, I draw off as we went through 20 years in the infantry, um You'll notice a lot of these common themes coming through, but 17 years old, you know, standard best soldier on the planet comes from a broken home looking for that tribe, looking for that sense of family.

I went through the infantry, did everything wrong, got out of the infantry, I did everything wrong and then started an app. Um and this is where we're at, you just made a point there like about doing things wrong, you know, like when you're going through it, you think you're doing the right thing, but then, you know, sometimes you go through periods where we've all gone through this, where you kind of lose your tribe, you lose your connection, you lose your people, you lose your focus, your direction, your motivation, and your identity, you know, and when you're in it, like you don't really know, you don't know how to fix it. Like it's not until you look back in hindsight where you're like, oh man, if I had have known what I know now, I would have done things a lot differently and I wouldn't have been in that funk for as long as I was and that's the whole point of swiss eight in my mind. And you know, again for new listeners, I'm an ambassador for you guys. Adrian contacted me a couple of years ago and asked me to come on board and I was like, you know, what's the deal? What's we stayed about?

So and so forth. I'm going to make sure that I'm only affiliated with brands that I trust in, I believe I use myself and you know, basically how you summed it up soda is, you know, you're a guy that's taken these lessons that you've learned from your military experience and you just simply reapplied them and these principles and these lessons into the civilian community and you know, have gone on to build your own thing, create your own path. Um you know, back in a civilian society that doesn't understand what you've been taught what you've gone through. Um and you know, I'm very proud to be a part of that process and that's essentially what we're doing is taking these lessons that we've learned these principles that have been taught to us and just simply reapplying them and, you know, for me, man, like the last couple of years has been a big one. Um where normal people can take these principles that we've gone through, that we've made mistakes with that. We've integrated into our lives and um, you know, when the pandemic kicked off, people lost their jobs and people losing family members and their um their livelihood and things like that, they were going into quarantine and lockdown and you know, not seeing their tribe and you know, that obviously affected mental health.

And this is something that we as veterans have gone through when we get back from deployment, when we get out of the army, when we're transitioning back to that civilian society. Can you guys just touch on that for a moment? I mean, I'll touch just really quickly. I mean that's that's um, you're exactly right. When we first started to say, we we did a bunch of research, we'll call it research, its internal research. We just did surveys of our community and that's something that a lot of PhD candidates and unions have struggled to do, like trying to do professional uni studies on the veteran community. First you have to get them to sign up and say, I want to. And a lot of, I mean, let's let's be honest, when you get those emails saying, do you want to sign up for a study, it goes straight control of the lead. But um and so they didn't know, no one really had great cut through with 18-3018-40 year old males who had been in war zones. And so a lot of the research, we were looking at it going, it doesn't really line up with what we're experiencing. So we need to ask our audience and find out what's going on what's causing their mental health decline.

And we did this survey and the four biggest impacting factors were disconnection from tribe failure to maintain routine loss of identity was the highest. And no one really understood that they knew that. I used to look in the mirror and see a soldier. Now, I don't know what I am. Um, and then purpose was the 4th one. And so like when we, when you break those down and go tribe routine identity purpose, that's something military members are very familiar with, but that's not, that's not a veteran problem, that's a human problem. And then like you said, we were building solutions or interventions for veterans, then realizing that they have utility for everyone. Then we hit the pandemic and everyone on the planet. Well, everyone from what I could see anyway, everyone in Australia is going through the same thing. They are uncertain about who they are, what they're supposed to believe in, what their values are. They don't know if they've got a job there getting anxious and they're getting depressed. Ah and that's when we kind of made the decision to go suicide is a charity built by veterans, but it's for everyone. We can't we can't hold tools in the veteran community that have value for everyone. So yeah, absolutely agree.

It's, it's the pandemics may have opened everyone's eyes to the veteran kind of experience and from what the research we've done it is very, very dependent on identity. And unfortunately that's the thing that veterans lose are the most when you leave the military because we don't have a transition, a decent transition out that focuses on the psychology behind changing your identity. Yeah, that's a great point mate. Like when you join the army, you go through, you know, bootcamp essentially recruit training and then you go into your initial employment training or your trade school um if you will and you know, you get taught how to become a soldier to serve a specific role from a dude that just walks in off the street who has gone through the same, you know, kind of cycle of life that most other people have gone through. But then when you become a soldier like you get taught that and then you're a lot different and a lot of people haven't really experienced what that kind of world is like and then when you discharge you don't get any training how to reintegrate back into society. Yeah, I made it, I had to give a talk on this about a month ago, a month and a half ago.

It was at a post traumatic stress for him. And it was a little bit daunting because it was like, it was a room full of qualified psychiatrists and then me going up there to tell them that all their research is wrong and they should be focusing on something else. Um, but no, that's that's what I was focusing on is focusing on identity through transition. And I was looking at rites of passage through history, um, without giving the whole speech that went for bloody 20 minutes through history. We've had rites of passage to, to transition through stages of life when we changed identity and in my life, I know the biggest thing missing like Mix was touching on that you joined the army to find tribe and kind of prove yourself amongst your peers. And we don't have an adolescent rite of passage anymore in the Western world, like Boyz, two men, there's no, there's no change. One day you're allowed to drive a car the next year, you're allowed to drink beers and that's kind of it. You don't get any training or any kind of instruction on how to become a man. Um, And that touched on that is why chivalry is dead. That is why Masculinity is now toxic. It's because we've got 30, 40 year old boys instead of um, young boys.

And then men. Um, but anyway, yeah, like you said there is this the only rite of passage that I've had successfully through the three stages is ka puka like transitioning me from civilian to soldier. I was given new values. I was given a new lifestyle, new haircut, new image, new identity and then celebrated into the army as that new person and then Takes you six months to train a civilian to be a soldier and then they don't, they spend 15 minutes signing you out and taking your id card at the end. There needs to be, I mean that was the point. There needs to be some form of training that takes you from soldier back to civilian, changes your identity, changes your values or not changes but adjusts and gets you ready for the real world again? Mm hmm. Yeah, there was, is this something that you guys, sorry, sorry max. I was just gonna ask, is this something that you guys um are looking to address with Swiss, say not just for people that have gotten out that are going through or have been through that transition process? Maybe, you know, they're having some mental issues, mental health implications, etcetera. Like are you guys again using that proactive model?

Um, looking at uh, inserting ourselves into that transition process at some stage in the future and giving people an understanding of what they're likely going to come up against what they're going to feel what they're going to experience before it happens. I think we have to, I mean max jump in whenever you want. Just I think we have to, I think, I mean we are very, get involved in the using lived experience like max was saying get involved in the transition training for soldiers on their way out. Um but but one thing like I said these are human issues, like the identity is the hottest topic on the planet at the moment. Everybody wants their own and we can break that down three hours if you want. As to why? I think that's kind of in that stage of society, but everyone wants their own identity and identity changes through stages of life for everyone. Like anyone changing jobs, moving cities, professional athletes is a demographic we definitely want to work with because that's all the same problems. They have a big identity crisis when they used to be a famous football player and now I'm Jonah who used to be a famous footy player.

There is yeah, I think we have to, I think we need to take all the lessons we've learned from the veteran community veteran space and then start building training on identity transition for everyone. And I mean this is going to have absolute utility. If we look at the curve of automation and computer systems and how that is going to start reducing those lower labor intensive jobs that we can automate garbage delivery driver, like interstate truck drivers, all these cars that are coming on that are going to start making jobs obsolete like we've never seen before. If we can master the transition peace now ahead of the curb in 10, 15 years time and this is starting to become prevalent. Absolutely. Um, because we look at the capitalist system and how we work in society. That identity pieces is, there's limited education about that and half of that is okay. What, who's codes? I'm strengthening conditioning coach, that's who I am. We identify with the job that we do and not with the person, there's some really great stuff out there that can allow you to knock the edges off any transition from different jobs and that identity piece and I serve, I'm not a surfer, et cetera.

But yeah, this transition pieces super important over the next 15 years it will be an industry. Mm hmm. Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. Now when I first came on board, you guys had your, uh, your eight principles of health and wellness. Um, now since that time you guys have kind of made some changes to those principles for myself and for the audience. Can you guys touch on those changes and why those changes occurred? Yeah, I mean this kind of circles back to that, that research piece we did when we found that the tribe routine identity and purpose with the four main factors and I mean we built the Swiss aid app to target the routine piece And then we first envisaged that um, try building or re connection style events would be another vertical or another product line within Swiss Eight and for that fundraising events and and kind of try building activities would be used to help people establish purpose. Ah and then over time, I mean, I would like to hope that we will be like this agile for as long as Swiss Aid exists in if we built something and we find advancements or we find things that need to be changed because of the feedback we're getting, we're going to do that.

We're not going to be stuck in our ways and go, no, we listed them as the eight. So they have to be the eight forever. Like that is a very religious mindset and I'm not a big fan of it. And so anyway, we took minimalism and time management and looked at them and basically said all the programming, all the life hacks that we can give people in. Those two can fit in discipline and that will give us the room to put tribe and purposes, their own pillars within our kind of a pillar model. Um It helps tie everything together. So you're four principles or your fore tribe routine identity purpose can all be improved within the app. Um and it just brings it kind of front of mind because we know that tribe and purpose are far more important than than minimalism or time management, like they're all valuable, they're all required. But you want the big ones at the top on the eight in the apps. So. Mhm. Now speaking on tribe, you know, this is something that has changed dramatically over the last couple of 100 years, pretty much since like the industrial revolution, right?

Like the world's population has exploded and gone are the days where you know, you have the same 50 people that you see every day that you interact with every day being the people that you work with, your family, your neighbors, your friends, like you see those same people, the people at the grocery store and you know their names and you interact with them, you know their family members, so on so forth, Like we don't live in that world anymore. We live in this world that is better connected than ever, but also the most disconnected that has ever been with this technology, like internet is great, right? But you know, we used to live in these times where your tribe or your neighborhood and your environment. If you had any issues, you would essentially put those things aside or you'd address it head on, right? So that you can clear that up. You can keep your tribe working together towards the same purpose of working together for survival. Now we don't have that. Now, people can say whatever the funk they want from any corner of the world.

Uh and there's pretty little ramifications from it. You know, people don't have that, that interconnectedness and that intimate relationship with people that they're seeing on a daily basis. Um, and building those connections deeper and deeper. You know, if you don't fit in with your environment and the people around you, you can now go onto an internet forum and that becomes your tribe. Mm hmm. Yeah, there's two points there. The first one is that we are creating ecosystems echo chambers on our social media that people just regurgitate and reverberate whatever particular narrative we're going down. So we're we are really compartmentalizing society into these specific, um, different areas. The other one is like we're fairly transient as human beings now bar a couple of people where you grew up in the same house and you uh, you know, your neighbor left and right. I lived in the house. I'm probably the worst for it. I didn't know my neighbor left and right. Ah there they invited around for barbecues. You would go home to a court and you would be surrounded by people that, you know, you know, your neighbors, your kids are all playing the same street together.

You're playing in the same football team. Now we're transient, everything's online. Um, yeah, there's mental health implications that we just don't see until until they present themselves. Yeah. I mean technology is evolving far quicker than humans and that's I think that's a fundamental problem and I think it's one that needs to be addressed. I have no idea here. So I'm not gonna pretend I do, but we are still biologically, again, everyone, this is this is objective, I guess. But everything I look at, I like to look at anthropologie and go, what were we doing? How have we evolved, what makes sense? And if it makes common sense and kind of dig down the rabbit hole a bit deeper and I were still biologically evolved to a point where we need to be in small tribes and there's a hierarchical system within human tribes. But I mean, I know tribes are all different sizes, so I kind of stick to that Dunbar's number of, if you can have 150 people and you kind of largest tribe, and that's how we are physically happy, healthy and kind of get along with life, the world got so big and I'm not, this is not a population reduction argument, but the world's got so big and our governments, our governance um has too many people for one leader or a two party system.

And it's got to the point where, I mean, politics is one thing, but we have essentially lost the tribal structure and we need it so much that we're itching to find a new tribe and a lot of people have turned to politics because religion is no longer a viable option and it's red team versus blue team in all Western democracies, it's red team versus blue team and that's a terrible political system, but I'm not going to argue that the problem is Our creativity and our ability to have opposing ideas is now limited to red team or blue team. So whereas back in the day, smaller tribes, 320 million people in America or what's there in Australia, like 30 million people. If we break that down into tribes of 150, I'm not gonna pretend I'm gonna do a quick math and figure out how many that is. But that's a lot of different um kind of cauldrons to brew different ideas, different ideologies and then they come together hopefully peacefully integrate ideas and whatever. But at the moment we're at a point where no matter what you think, if you believe in research on one side, then you're not allowed to have mixed ideas, you have to have a polar opposite idea and that's it and that is dividing everyone.

I think we need to find ways to go back to localized tribal systems and communities in order to be happy. I just made a great point. Then you made a great point, man, like people are looking for like that larger tribe and they draw the line in the sand and it's like us and them, but they're not going out and finding and creating their own tribe. You know, and this, we need to take some responsibility on this as well. Like, you know, the people that we surround ourselves with our environment, how we interact with others. you know, we get to create our own tribe and within those tribes, you don't just want people that agree with you. Like I want people that I can have deep conversations with, that we can disagree upon things and have, you know, and and go through the pros and the cons of each side and have a legitimate debate and have a discussion. It's not an argument, it's a discussion, it's a debate and you know, come to a solution. Hey, maybe because here's the thing, like if you're constantly talking about the same thing and you agree upon everything, like you're your you never get challenged on your ideologies, right?

And if you're not challenged on that, then how can you actually one consolidate that information and that ideology or think on the other side. And I enjoy having those deep conversations where people get me thinking about, you know, elements that I may not have thought about, and it may not necessarily change my opinion, but I'm thinking about other things that I may have forgotten or missed out on and I'm like, okay, I see that point of view now, you know, and that's either going to strengthen my argument or it's going to um put light on some things that I hadn't considered and maybe sway me back towards, you know, the center, it's like I want to have conversations with people that I don't necessarily agree with, so that I can look at what my ideologies are and what my thoughts are on certain things and if I don't have a way to communicate that well enough, then I probably don't understand it well enough. So then I need to start questioning my own thoughts well, I mean, it wasn't that wasn't that supposed to be universities and and that and that their places now where you can't have those conversations, like they're they're very one sided and you just get branded as as a bigot or sexist racist whatever label.

And they shut those conversations down, it's going to be a place, it's gonna be a scary place. Yeah, you're 100% right, mate. That is exactly what's happening. If, you know, people are finding their tribe and it's all people that agree with them and have the same vision the same idea and that is that echo chamber and and you know that tribe, those smaller tribes are creating this culture of us and them like, well if you disagree with us or if you disagree with this point, then, you know, we can't be friends and like it's getting to the point where people are working, you know, disowning family members and friends and things like that man, because they just don't agree upon one point, they might agree upon 100 things, they disagree upon three things and those three things, what are at the forefront of their mind and cause issues with those relationships. Yeah, I mean this all ties back to like this being the most identity confused time in history or in history as we know it. I mean I know people do say that the roman empire got to this point as well um just before it collapsed and this is kind of where the western world's heading. But It's it's confused and it's the university bits the scary because young people don't know who they are yet.

I mean I'm 36 and I'm just starting to figure it out. Like young people don't know who they are and that's what we used to get from our tribe was their identity and values. And those two things kind of go hand in hand, your identity is kind of structured on what your values are and when you young and you love yelling it at protests and screaming like most of your students do it because you're trying to figure out who you are. But unfortunately and I don't blame America but like its american models of society and politics that trickled down to Australia and we're starting to see it here now to the politicians are looking to lower the voting age so they can get more identity confused young people to vote for terrible, terrible concepts and that's where it links together, it's like we're governed by Can then play two emotions, you move as a kid, you're all emotion and it's like babies having tantrums. You just throw the toys out of the cotton until you get a smack and start to learn some things about life and that's what you shape your values and who you are off. But yes my I think unless I mean I don't want to make future predictions for the entire world, but I think unless we solve this identity problem um the western world's in a pickle in the next decade or so.

Hopefully not, but it's looking that way and I mean I don't know how long you want me to rent for, but like where I believe this is coming from, like you go back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs and nowhere in the west that we have to worry about the bottom two rungs anymore. We don't have to worry about like Uber eats will literally drop me food anywhere I want at any time. I can sit inside, never leave the house. Um Food is not a problem. Shelter is not a problem. Entertainment is not a problem. We're all The bottom 99% of society that was used to spending all their time and energy focusing on food security and shelter now have too much free time. And because of that we're all moving so far up Maslow's hierarchy that we all think that we are creative geniuses and we can change the identity of yourself and we can all be this individual person, Some parts of that's fantastic. But it's causing 3-5 value sets to skew out into 500 million different identities that we have to worry about. I don't know, I don't think you can maintain in this day and age, a strong social structure.

You can't have a strong defense forces, You can't have a stable country when everybody thinks they are an individual with their own identity that everybody else must bow down to. I think we're in a pickle. Mm hmm. You make a great point there um and kind of touches on the hierarchical system that we spoke about before. When you have those smaller tribes, everyone's a role player, right? You've got the, you know, the head of the tribe or whatever and then you've got the people that support him or her and then you've got people that do certain roles and have different responsibilities within that smaller tribe. Um and that's, that's being lost. Man. We kind of touched on this actually last time we had a conversation for your podcast about, you know, the benefits of being within a sports team and learning how you fit into a team and understanding that sometimes you may need to make sacrifices for that team and you might be utilized in a role that you may not be as comfortable with, but that's for the benefit of the team.

Someone else might be able to play in a better position. You can be a little bit more of a utility player, better utilized in a certain position and you know, I think that is definitely missing in the world that we live in these days. You know, people do think that their opinion is just as important as the next person. And I mean this probably sounds a little bit controversial to say, but I can tell you right now. It's not like if people, if people say to me a codes, blah, blah, blah, blah, like there's going to be a number of people where I take their criticism and their points very seriously. And I'm like, all right, well, I'm clearly doing something wrong here. Five pissed these people off. Like I need to change how I'm doing things right? But then there's gonna be other people that might say the same thing and like I put no weight on their words whatsoever. I couldn't give a funk about it, Right? That's what people need to understand. Yeah, absolutely mate. Um, I don't know if you want, I was, I was too busy laughing at its 100% right. And there's, I mean, that's, that's, it's, it's about that, that's where people need to figure out their own, in their own value system is like, what do they appreciate?

Because some people will look at it and go, I trust in that guy because he's got a university degree. Um, I personally, and that's starting to get shady to me. I'm like, I trust in people who have listened to and I appreciate their opinions and I see that they're well researched and they've actually thought it through. That's the kind of people I trust in. But yeah, you're right. If anyone off the street just walks up and gives me, gives me shit about a project or something, I'm not going to, you're going to try and take it if it's constructive but not going too well. It's like when you, when you first get into Uh the baton and your boss sits you down, he's 18 years old. He's just got out of RMC and he's going to sit down and do a financial plan with you and you know and your platoon sergeant sitting next to him like what the funk is he talking about? Um It's live it's it's it's a cross between the lived experience and and the respect of the people that are talking to you like you know you go and see a psychic or a psychologist or a doctor and some of the GPS are some of the most unhealthiest looking people I've ever seen. They look like they're near death gray skin, poor posture, overweight.

And you're like and they're telling, you know this is what you gotta do to get healthy and I'm like, do you know what that is? Ah And I think that's part of the thing, you guys, especially you and Adrian really live and embody the stuff that you preach. It's not a preaching. It's you live it and you're like well we've done it and we're going to adapt and move as we go. Um and then you couple that with the research and and I think this is why psychologists and psychiatrists are struggling at the moment in their treatment pathways, because there's also a limited amount of respect for the person. Yeah. And the lack of sites in Australia means that that like the numbers over the next 3-5 years will be 50% of sites will be within their first three years at a uni. It's like, I don't know, I don't know if you're qualified, you might you might have the piece of paper, but I don't know if you're there yet. I mean it's it's the same as like you probably hated codes because you could literally be someone's life coach. Like in all aspects of the majority of aspects of someone's life, you could coach them to be better at life. Yet there's 22 year old kids out there calling himself life coaches on the Internet, and I'm like, what, what is your life experience that you are going to pass on to anyone and value at?

Um and it's a credibility thing, like pieces of paper and qualifications are literally coming in cereal boxes now, we have to look for legitimate value quality or whatever it is in the people that we're going to take advice from and without deliberately trying to circle this all back together. It's because we don't have tribal elders anymore. We don't have those people within our communities that have been there, done that and stuck around to pass on all their knowledge and why that is, I don't know, it's like the most valuable part of tribal society. We've just thrown to the kick to the curb. Mm That's a great point. You know, we are transitioning or have, I mean it's fucking unfolded for the last century or so. Where you know, you mentioned earlier man, like religion is nowhere near as prominent as it was, you know, back in the day 3, 400 years ago, it was like science versus religion and you know, dude, to me, like I'm not religious at all and I was not brought up in a religious family. However, I definitely see some of the benefits of the religion and religions, certain religions have been around for a long time because it is essentially a codified set of rules, right?

This is what's being passed on from generation to generation. This is right, this is wrong, this is how you're going to live your life and you know, whether there's a god or the devil or heaven and hell or whatever, like doesn't really matter like that is just to get people to understand that there are consequences to your actions and there's a lot of benefits of religious practices and and spiritual practices which are falling by the wayside, which is an absolute shame to me man because you know, there is so much benefit to that and you know that wisdom has been around for such a long time, but now people just completely discredited, let's talk about like dinner. So you know, praying before you go to dinner and being thankful. So instead of sitting around praying to God for all the things that you're thankful for, we just don't do that anymore because we don't believe in God. I'm like, you can still sit around and it's the appreciation piece, right? You could, you could still sit around as a family unit and be appreciative of the things you have, but because we've removed God at it, we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater, we don't go to church on Sundays as a community and come together like they have routine, they have identity, they have a common cause all these things that we lost with religion tribe as well.

And this is where this is going to sound, this is going to sound, I mean remember originally they said don't worship false idols and now the church has gone, we do start worshiping, we do any like instagram models and anything crossfit anything you will, if you can find something that you can relate to everything out of that person's mouth is gospel. Um I'm not saying that celebrities now, isn't it, celebrities, celebrities of the new jesus. Absolutely, and they jump on and do political statements and and you know, really drive that whole narrative, you're like, no, I think we need to go back and have a look at the positive from religious systems and and bring them back into society. How, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it comes down to supply and demand as well, you mentioned earlier, the 22 year old life coach that doesn't have any fucking life experience that is telling people how to live their lives, right? Like, who's to blame? Is it that 22 year old who's putting out that information or is it the fucking people that are paying for that service? You know, like, it's a reflection of society.

Absolutely, absolutely. It's a reflection of society and its complex with layers, like, I would never shoot on a 22 year olds having a crack at starting a business by himself, I do shoot on society, forget, Well, I mean, you want to make people believe that they can do anything, that's that's cool. But then allowing there's a lot of desperate people out there and they'll cling to anything that they think is going to make their life less painful. And Unfortunately there's plenty of marketing tools out there to to get the 22 year old message in front of that person, so I'm a I'm a I'm a bit of a capitalist at heart. I think the market sells itself in the long run if someone's a 22 year old without absolutely nothing to offer, they might get a few clients good on them, they need to learn and adapt. If not they're going to be out of business pretty quick. And that's kind of how capitalism takes care of the problem. Yeah, absolutely, Absolutely. And you know, there will always be like flash in the pans, just like there's always um different fads and um, you know, these kind of cycles that we go through. Um, like you look at fashion man, like you look at the diet industry, you know, fucking carbs were demonized and then, or fats were demonized and then proteins demonized and like it just goes in these cycles like every 8 to 10 years, it happens again, Same thing happens with fashion, right?

So, and that's, and that's because, you know, as we mentioned earlier, people aren't clear on their identity, who they are, what they value. And when you're not clear on those things, you get pulled in multiple directions, you fall victim to all of the marketing. So again, who's to blame. Yeah, I think the other thing, I mean, I'm wearing a very hippie ish jacket now as I was waiting to see if that's why you're making fashion comments. Um, that's exactly why man. And let me to talk about this all the time about going to different towns, going, trying to get yourself in a different mindset, you go to a bar and you put on your bar and a costume, um, for a lot of people, I mean, the one way you can look at it is like that person is just completely fake. They're pretending they're abiding by local for two days and then they're heading straight back to Bondi. But at the same time, I think, I mean this is especially for younger people, people that you do need to experiment with your identity if you haven't figured out what it is yet and you're still in the slow transition like myself from veteran too hippie. Um you've got to, you've got to play around with fashion Local. Yeah, this is, this is from last time I was up there. Um but no, you got to experiment as long as I think it's just being conscious of the fact that you are experimenting instead.

It's dangerous to wake up one day, put on your bar and basement and go, everything today is going to be super happy and peaceful because I'm a hippie today and then you get hit by a bus and you like fun and you need to be conscious of the fact that you're experimenting and you haven't actually transitioned into that new identity. So Maybe don't change all your social profiles to happy Hippie 69, like it's a process And if you do buy into the fashion, just hold onto it 15 years. I've got stuff from my wardrobe is coming back into fashion now. I'm like, fuck, yes, it'll be good. Exactly. Made, it always goes around in cycles. Now, what I want to talk about next is, you know, you guys, last time we had a conversation, we spoke about what you're working on, Some of the projects you're working on to help people rebuild their tribe and find their purpose. And you know, you spoke about the fink desert race now that obviously unfolded, Can you talk about like that process what you guys got out of that, what the lessons that you learned were? Um and some things that you're gonna take away from that moving forward and that maybe some of the projects that you're working on. Absolutely, mate.

So from a, from a tribe of perspective, I think the fink was a massive success. Um We went away, we took, we took a bunch of current serving guys from some pretty high stress environments and took them away with a group of guys, most 80% of that group were high speed individuals. And we brought one or two guys in that needed that hand to see what it was and how it was going. Um We've got a lot of support um from defense. We partnered with them. Well, we we got a bit of sponsorship. I think we've paid for the sponsorship. So it's perplexing. Um, and took him away and really the whole experience, we sat around. I mean, a couple of times there, you'll see these kumbaya camp story um, with people that haven't got lived experience, like you can't shove this sort of stuff down people's throats. We had a couple of beers on one of the nights around the campfire and probably within about 15 minutes, 20 minutes, two or three beers in, people just started telling little worries And then stuff.

And then there was a couple of guys that were from the mining industry that had been 30, 40 years in emergency mining, pulling pieces of people out of mine explosions and stuff. And he just had never spoken about it. And because we didn't set up an actual kumbaya, here's your pipe, you hold it, you get to talk and then we're holding on to the next one, it just flowed and it was organic and it was in a group of people where, because you didn't make it a thing, they trusted and they believed in it and it was really good mate. I mean, outside of that, the exposure that the event generated was was fantastic. Ah and going forward, we're going to try and replicate that this year. Problem is when you're grabbing guys from those sort of particular units, um there it's on again, off again. So you don't know if you're going to get him or not, you know, you have to register in february by the time june comes around, there could be some in three different countries by then. So, but yeah, mate, so yeah, which side, which side we're going down that rabbit hole?

Well I mean we'll circle back to this in a moment but I want to hear you know, some of the projects that you're working on, the lessons you took away from that and then we'll circle back to you know how social media is showing what actually happens in war zones and how it can affect individuals and you know it does really draw drive the light towards some things that soldiers have potentially gone through and why they may have some mental health implications. But we'll come back to that in a moment. Yes, so I mean we I mean everyone who used to put particular this particular units up on pedestals, we know now that the turnover rates so high that these are fairly junior guys that some of them haven't deployed and we were sitting around and really it was such an even keel but the professionalism that they moved into it with, they I mean they we got orders as a race team got delivered orders full smack way to go and that common language and that common I like I used to fight me and Adrian used to head butt heads over it. Um But the common language, everyone just clicked straight back into, okay this is what I'm doing, this is what part of the team I'm in and um yeah this is the role that I'm serving, these are my responsibilities, how can I play my part in the team.

Absolutely. Um, and then outside of that it is an event that is, it's a fun event that you can go to um that you can put a bit of a pilgrimage into, so from Brisbane to the fink stopping along the way because if you don't have an excuse to do something, most guys won't do it. So it's a good excuse to get people together and teach them those tribe experiences, those boys built relationships there that or rekindled that are still going now. Very cool. What are some of the projects that you're looking at this year over the next year or two? Can you share anything on that? Well we've got to keep that hush hush. Um, no surprise motherfucker's. No, I mean we'll be pretty open about it. We, we are Tight for cash at the moment. We've hopefully there's an election coming up in Australia. One of the parties, the Liberal Party is committed $2 million 7000 Australian veterans using it at the moment.

We're still having conversations with labor. Hopefully they can come to the party and veteran space is very um, what do you call it? A nonpartisan? Um yes, so hopefully it'll be the same, but that'll, that'll heavily obviously heavily impact where suicide heads over the next 12 to 24 months, we still have a strategic kind of road map in place. We started um research in partnership with Newcastle Uni last year on two projects. One of them has finished now the prelim results are out and it's proven young PhD candidates proven that using this was a trap over eight weeks reduces U k 10 score, which is your distress market, anxiety, depression, which is fantastic. And then that was leading into what is our next main project. It's going to be a three year project. But we are we have started the research with Newcastle to build an artificial intelligence model um to to take all of the biometrics that we can currently pull from wearables from the way we write the way we talk or as many avenues as possible and funnel them into the app so that when you're using All the programs within Swiss eight, you can track your own mental health markers and that way long term obviously it predicts mental health decline at an individual level.

And yes, this might sound like were kind of letting cats out of bags but no one in the world is doing at the moment. We're working with the first, we've just got to make sure that we're funding to get it all the way through. And I guess the exciting part about that is all the models at the moment, all psych research or surveys, all research in general. It's looking at um in the medical kind of field, it's always looking at the whole of society kind of models And um or looking at what was the most effective interventions for this type of person. And as we know, especially with fitness and nutrition dietetics like you touched on before they're kind of soft sciences for when it comes to an individual level in that you can't read a textbook and know what's going to be the perfect solution for every person on the planet. And those textbooks, they might be as accurate as possible to the current science or the current research. But everyone as an individual is different. And when you've got an Ai model or an ai brain tracking you as a person and all your daily health and mental health or health and well being kind of markers, you get a customized plan.

And that's when we will need to work with partners like yourself, like a bunch of other organizations to make sure when these people get this feedback, they have a custom built plan specific for them and that's the long term goal mate. I mean, I going back to life coaching, I believe the golfers would say it is to build a digital life, an ai life coach for every person who's using our software and the metrics always will be. How do we keep people healthy and happier so that suicide become zero in the highest demographics first and then the whole world hopefully mm hmm. That's brilliant man. Um I mean, we'll probably need to talk about this a little bit more offline. But anyone that has been listening to the podcast for awhile knows that I'm pretty much running like that same system, that same model on a daily basis with tracking health markers and health metrics like blood pressure, waking heart rate, heart rate variability. Like I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is walk across the room, turn, turn my alarm off, open the blinds, get some light in, lay back down, put my heart rate.

Um My chest strap on, put my blood pressure cuff on, hit my blood pressure cuff, take my blood pressure. Alright. See where I'm trending. Next thing I do hit my heart rate variability up boom. See where my heart rate variability is. Which is a measure of my autonomic nervous system. Am I sympathetically driven? And my paris sympathetically driven? Okay. And then I'll go and check um and it gives me a readiness score and then I'll go and check my waking heart rate and I'll check my sleep. Alright. All of that data then gives me information and that information provides knowledge. Alright, well this data says this, this is the information that it's providing me. Maybe it's a dirt. Well, today is a thursday, right? I've trained hard this week. I've been working hard, my sleep has been a little bit off for the last couple of weeks because I'm working on my own projects. I'm pretty much working till 7 38 30 at night, every night for the last couple of weeks, right? So I know that um you know, my sleep is a little bit depleted. I'm not getting as much deep sleep as I need so on so forth. So then I need to start making adjustments to my training.

I need to start making adjustments to my nutrition. I need to, maybe I'm in a sympathetic state. I haven't slept very well, I need to pull my training back a little bit. Um and I'm going to do a little bit more mindfulness, meditation based work. I'm going to eat, maybe, you know, reduced my carbohydrates, maybe increase my fats, my proteins, my fruits and vegetables throughout the day. So I'm getting a heap of more micro nutrients, vitamins, minerals in etcetera, to support all of this stress that my body has been under, right, so I can get back to recovering and and functionally functioning optimally right? Maybe I turned my phone off a little bit earlier and go to bed a little bit earlier. You know, I'm already doing all of this stuff and this is something that I'm teaching with the podcast and, you know, with the training programs that I'm building out at the moment, e books and things like that, that I'm gonna have on my website, we're already going to be putting this stuff together. Um and it's like, you know, it's like you follow the bouncing ball, if this happens, this is what we do, these are the options, If this happens, these are the options and it's about looking at the principal's, its principles driven, right?

And then you give people methods and tools that they can choose that are appropriate for them in that situation too elicit the desired outcome and that's what the Ai does. Yeah, absolutely everything you say. I mean obviously that's why I believe that we get along so well and that that we obviously work together on stuff like this because we do have very similar mindsets and everything you're currently doing. I think the biggest goal for what we want to build with an Ai model is to take all of that and take the manual labor out of and it's and stress the stress of thinking about it. So I mean I've seen heaps of memes and it does make sense. It's like people, there's so many health and lifestyle tips out there now it's like you need eight hours sleep a day, you've got to work for eight hours, you're commuting and now either way you gotta cook, you got to go to the gym, you've got to meditate, blah blah blah. It's like how the fund do you fit that in a 24 hour day in order to track it properly. You've also got to add about an hour worth of metric monitoring and kind of coming up with your own fixes. So if we can remove that part of it and automate as much as possible.

I think it works for the end user definitely improving kind of mental health markets. But it also works hopefully for people like yourself who can use it as a tool in your own business. Mm hmm. That's a great point as well as like, you know, everything's interconnected. It's not like I just wake up in the morning and my HIV is low meaning my body is under stress, right? And I'm in a sympathetic state. It's like I haven't been I've been working really hard. I've also been training really hard. I haven't been sleeping as well. You know, some days my my steps, my activity level is really fucking high and my food consumption is really low. Right? So that's all adding to my lower energy levels and that's affecting my mood, my attitude, that's affecting my hormones, my neurotransmitter health. Like everything is connected and this is what people need to understand. Like it's not like you just do one thing and it fixes everything. It's like, you know, it's it's an integrated approach, right?

We need to look at the different isolated systems, the different isolated things and then integrate that into an overall holistic system. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's where ai is changing the game. It's in research to begin with. So when do we start to say 2018 to 2018, I sat down for the first time with Newcastle Union said this is what I want to build, We've got a PhD candidate, um and there's eight pillars that people are gonna be working towards and they shoot themselves straight away and they're like, I don't think we're gonna be able to pull it off, because the old model of research was that everything is in control except for one variable, and that's how you do studies, and it's like, how can we, and that's where the data, I think research is, so a lot of it's so outdated in the health space because you're looking at what's the better diet, carnival versus vegan without any other levels of complexity on the people's lifestyle and the results are obviously impacted. So when you get an Ai brain, we're moving into that kind of era where ai is a reasonable way to compute and to automate things and it's like if you got an A on my brain layering on looking at every level of complexity possible that we can get a data input from in that person's life, then we can look at a how to solve problems for that person.

But b I think the big one for us, it's like if you're struggling to get candidates to do research trials, but you've got 10,000 veterans using an app and all they have to do is go alright to be part of this trial. All I've got to do is say yes and just go about my life, The research possibilities I think are huge for starting to get way more accurate data in what nutrition is right for people, what fitness and breath work, meditation, yoga plays whatever it is and how that impacts your mental health and well being. You made a great point man. Like if you can remove the barriers, people are more inclined to follow through on something and participate, especially veterans, you put one piece of friction or 11 obstacle in front of a veteran like funk that it's, I mean your health absolutely right. It's your knowledge base is so important, but your powers of deduction in determining what particular one facet of your health is out. That is throwing things out. You see an overweight person and jim flogging themselves.

Like I also had, I had thyroid cancer, had my thyroid removed five years ago, so and and that's never put into a factor and all these things, it's how intelligent you are having a something that can put all these variables together in your life um brilliant. And then what you can do is once you have the data, like no one I was, it's amazing. No one's ever done a study that said if you effectively sleep train, eat right, Um have disappeared all those that the eight pillars of Swiss aid, you'll be better with your mental health. No one's ever done. It was like you can't put it together, it's never been done. And we're like, yeah, well let's do it like, oh, you can't do it, got done. And then right now, the thing is we're doing, we're doing it every day, correct. You guys are just system izing it and putting it out to people and looking for I mean, the charity does help. It's looking for a way to build this with the financial model that's effective when we're going up against the 45 biggest organizations on the planet.

Like this research has been done before, but it's been done by organized companies like google. Like Apple. Like they are tracking everything. If you're wearing an Apple watch, they are tracking this stuff already. The problem is they don't want to turn it into a mental health that because the number one problem with your mental health right now, if you're listening to this is how much time you look at your fucking phone and Apple is never releasing holistic health data that says, if you want to improve your well being, we've got all the data points, we know how to do it, but you've just got to switch your phone off for the rest of your life. Like that's never gonna happen. And I mean, hopefully we don't get shut down. I love a good conspiracy about big tech companies shutting people down. I don't think we will. I think we'll be fine. But when we get this thing built, um it's gonna be a game changer. Yeah, listen man, you just made a really good point then, like, you guys are essentially a tech company at the moment, right? So, you know, if people want to use the app to improve their mental health, then they need to use their phone, they need to use the app and they need to, you know, start structuring in and utilizing this content.

And a point that I want to make here is that, you know, you're either using your phone as a tool or you are the tool and you're the one that's being used, right? Like, I can use a hammer to smash someone's fucking head in, but I can use the hammer to build a family now, or I can use that to build a build a house for my family, right? Like how you use that tool is very important. And, you know, anyone that has been listening for a while and knows that fairly regularly every 4 to 6 weeks I go away for a digital detox, like I use my phone. Um it's part of my work, it's part of my job, right? Like, you know, sharing the social sharing on social media, some of the stuff that I'm doing with the fighters, I'm not sharing everything okay, because my main fucking job is working with people, right? But I'm doing myself a disservice if I'm not sharing some of that stuff as well, right? So how you use that is just as important, whereas you've got other people that are just sharing all of the stuff that they're doing and that is, that literally becomes their job, right?

As you mentioned earlier with the influencer who's spending all their time on social media. So it really, you know, it really does. Um, it is very important, how you use these tools, how you wield them, But that's where the discipline comes into play. You know, for me, I set my clock for 90 minutes every day. That's my social media time and I do that in like 20-30 minute blocks throughout the day whenever I need to know setting that setting that left and right of arc. I know, alright, I'm getting on my phone, boom, boom boom, boom boom boom boom, I don't funk around, I don't scroll, I go on, I literally do what I need to do and I get off man. Yeah, I mean we don't have, the good thing is between us and google is we don't have shareholders and so you're not going to get, you're not going to lose board positions when you're telling people not to use your app, we're selling its trust and it's lived experiences what suicides portraying as well, You know, it's saying we're going through and doing it and we, I think for both of us, all three of us have sat there multiple times and been like, get off your fucking phones Yeah, there is a time to use it.

Yeah, we need to use some of the tools to get you into a routine but get off your phones and you you probably won't hear three bigger advocates of that than on this call. Yeah, absolutely. And it's also about the evolution of the industry to and what societies like where they're consuming information and so you have to, it's a, it's a trade off. We're lucky it all stems back to your own values and we are, we don't have shareholders, we don't have board members, we have board members but not invested members that are directing where we're going. So as long as we know that 10 years, 20 years, whenever it is down the track, when we get to a position and we go, if we can look at it and go, hey people are ready for the the education that the habit changed and they're ready to get off their phones, then we look at other ways to um do the same thing or whatever it might be, but where we are at the moment we have to, you have to meet the market in the middle and everyone, we did do look at the research and there's plenty out there to show that even facebook, it was started as a social networking platform. Um the intent behind it was to connect people and what it did was disconnect the entire planet.

We are aware that we are building a connection focused and routine, building mental health app. And the biggest problem with people's connection and routine is that they stare at their phone too much. Um, but we need to meet the market where it is, we need our biggest goal is to get information education to people and that at the moment means you need to be on social media, you need to be on apps. Um, and in the digital space, um, 30, 50 years from now, who knows where we're going to be, but things are changing pretty quickly and I think people will be ready. There's either gonna, I mean there's going to be an evolution in technology as well and we're gonna get to the point hopefully where they invent phones that don't fuck you, circadian rhythm, sleep, cycle your life in general. Um, and, and well obviously if we've got the capacity to be trying to drive trends to move away from whatever makes people lose their sleep and disconnect from each other. But yeah, I think where we are now, we have to, we have to accept the necessary evil and the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but we are lucky enough that we don't have any, any kind of negative forces directing where we're heading.

So we are going through the technical technological revolution, we are living through that right now, you know, it is a revolution and like the advancements happening so fast. Um, to tie into what you just said, like you guys are an app, you are delivered straight to somebody's phone so they can structure and schedule the most important things in their life, create a system that essentially sets up their days. They don't have to think about things too much right now for some people listening think about this, there's things in your life that you've done before, that, you know, make you feel better about yourself and how you're living. There's also things that you've done in your life that makes you feel shit about who you are and how you're living. You know, we need to ask the question is this serving me? How is this serving me? So if you go onto your phone and you're spending time scrolling through social media looking, you know, you're following accounts that make you feel shit about yourself, then like you're fucking doing that to yourself.

You know, people need to take responsibility. However, if you're using your phone to go onto the Swiss Aid app and structure in there. You know, some mindfulness work first thing in the morning and then some training, you're following, you know, performance functional training training program. Um, and you're looking at, you know, the nutrition side of things and you're looking at, you know, some of the content to allow you to get to sleep and manage your circadian rhythm a little bit better. Like that is now serving you for the better if something is not serving you for the better and it's creating a negative impact on your life. Like how fucking long do you need to follow that before you go, Oh you know what I'm doing this to myself? You know one of my, I really like this quotes like before you heal somebody ask if they're willing to give up the things that make them sick. Yeah, fuckingo I guess um the tough part is that once you get into that state where you are staring your phone too much, it does make you mildly depressed. The more depressed you are, the more dopamine you want, you go back and it's a vicious cycle and people, once, once you're deep into it, you don't even realize that you're staring at your phone for two hours and I've been here for five minutes, but it's consuming your life.

But no, I mean, as as an easy to do um life hack. I I did that a couple of weeks ago, what you just said, just went through instagram and was like, I'm not a fan of this fee and then I was like, hang on a minute, I curated this feed subconsciously maybe, but I curated this feed and I just went through and I just unfollowed or I think I think there's a way that you can say that you want to, you don't want to see their ship anymore. Um and just did that to all of the people whose content was either negative or all of the things that were distracting me that I had anything that had mean mean pages are gone unfortunately hilarious but I had to go and I got to the point where now I'm scrolling through and it's all relaxing ship which it's a good test for people to to to go do it this week in four weeks time. Come back and have a look at what your feeds like and what headspace were you in when you did that kind of coal and everything in mind? Well it was up until a couple of days ago, everything in mind was just landscaping stuff heaps and mountains. I'm a massive fan of having like swiss alps and mountains in the thing. And then now unfortunately started like every third photo because I followed the hashtag mountains.

And now every third photo is a chick with giant tickets with hashtag in the bottom of it. So even at 36 I'm learning lessons about social media but it works mate. Like social media now is pleasant. Well before it was who who's that blonde? Who was that blonde someone. So I think that's market a little bit of renovations going on next door. Got a jackhammer going on. Yeah. Who was that? I didn't do it on my feet. It was kissing me off and it was a blonde personal trainer and every time I opened it up I'd lose my mind. I was like hang on I'll just unfollowed him and problem solving that for me dude. Yeah but you're doing exactly I mean Jordan Peterson talks about it so it's a bunch of good sites but no matter what outside impact or outside influence on your life it's your personal choice how you emotionally respond to it and it takes fucking training. Like if a dog ships in your face you are going to be grumpy and the first time for us to use some ex mrs analogies but I'm like no I'm going to stay out of that, stay out of that rabbit hole.

But if you if someone says something mean to you, if someone does something mean to you like you getting shitty and you getting fired up and wanting to go down and troll some dude social page and blow up at him that dude's never met you like that that the impact is your internal choice to go I'm going to respond by getting grumpy and ruining my day and that I mean that that that kind of concept once you takes time but once you can master it and go no matter what happens to me you're super stoic kind of mentality regardless of what happens, I'm not going to have an emotional response, I'm going to sit there and think about how to react like a logical person changes your life man and I'm nowhere near nailing it but something I'm working on heavily. Yeah that stoicism there's a really good book, Marcus Aurelius meditations. That is, you know, I mean, effectively diaries of, he was a massive proponent and philosopher of stoicism in the, in the early roman times. Um, but I'm just saying you were talking about industry being at the precipice or in the middle of the technological revolution where we're getting all this technology, we don't know how to use it yet.

The same thing happened in a different way when they first like gin and actually when they started distilling liquor, hard liquor, um, people were shitfaced everywhere. Like you can go and google it, you google it and the entire country London was drunk from the moment they woke up till they went to bed, like it got bad, people found this new thing and everyone, people were losing their mind. Like there's, there's a couple of really famous, um, art pieces where there's photos of moms and their kids are falling out of their arms and laying around in the gutters, like they were so drunk, they were just leaving their kids in the gutters and stuff. So, and then finally we through trial, trial, probably lots of suicide, probably lots of death, we figured out probably shouldn't drink gin when you wake up in the morning like and portraying over, um, I don't know where and then the information is getting passed on from generation to generation, Hey, kids probably shouldn't do this And it and it does mate, and I mean, where do we go into the future, 2030 years time.

I'm hoping that the churches won't be around like there's gonna be some empty buildings where the church is used to be. Um, could you imagine having a place where the app has taken people to a point and then these buildings where people used to come for rhetoric and for for hate are now put over to higher learning, teaching life lessons and education. And there's a, there's a church in every town, so see what happens. Yeah, I think that that's starting to happen and I'm it's gonna sway back and forth like everything does before it lands in the middle. But you are seeing like, um, because we're not believing in the information that we're getting from one political party or another and that kind of dictates what the media pushes down to us. We are some demographics within society are starting to build their own communities. And unfortunately in the early days it's, it's going to get very cultish, I think. Um, and they're frowned upon. There's a bunch of titles people give them like anti vaxxers and, and, and, and cults and whatever it is, but I think we'll end up finding a position somewhere in the middle between the two party system and 1000 hippie communes.

There'll be a spot where it's like there's a handful of of kind of value sets? And, and the church? I think it has to, it has to be replaced or evolve itself. I mean, who knows? Um, but yeah, those buildings, I mean that's, that's what the RsL could have been, It could have been that place like the church of the veteran, but they got stuck in their ways. They didn't adapt. They weren't agile enough. And unfortunately there's buildings all over Australia now that are half empty. Um, but yeah, I think we'll get a place of worship. Yeah. They used to worship okies and beers and then they slow the good ones, the good ones are putting gyms in and they're starting to worship health and fitness, which is fantastic. But I think it has to, it has to happen. There has to be a new belief structure that moves forward and replaces what the bunch of religions did. I don't think it's going to be in our lifetime mate, unless we adapt really quickly. Religion has been trying to, they've all been trying to kill each other for that many thousands of years. I don't know if they're going to fade away just yet, but mm hmm. Something I want to touch on very quickly before I let you guys go. Um, is we mentioned earlier, like what's unfolding, uh, you know, in Ukraine at the moment.

Um, I listened to your guys podcast, What was the guy's name that you had on? Sasha? Yeah. So yeah, I listened to that great podcast man. I just finished reading a book, prisoners of geography that talks about, you know, those natural barriers and borders and explains, you know, how a lot of conflicts around the world in recent times have evolved and how it's all kind of interconnected with, you know, previous conflicts and history and um natural barriers and boundaries and things like that. Really interesting read and he just kind of tied everything in that I was reading in the book um which was, you know, it was, it was interesting because I think the book came out in 2000 and 16 and then, you know, basically predicted what's happening and what's unfolding at the moment. I thought that was a really good episode, but what I want to touch on is, you know, this is we are going through this technological revolution. I mean, it wasn't that long ago that we were in Afghanistan, but we didn't have, we weren't carrying out looking, you know, the closest thing that we had to what they have now with these live feeds on social media is like helmet cam, that was the closest thing that we had and that was only a decade ago and now you've got people that, you know, you you can literally go onto social media platforms and you're seeing people walking along taking a selfie and then just fuckingo up in a you know, a ball of flames like how do you think that's going to either educate or impact or what are the implications or unintended consequences that you see from, you know, what's happening over there.

Not only what's happening over there, but how um accessible that is to the average person. Well this is, this is part of the thing. I mean wars have been horrifically brutal since we started, since the first monkey hit the other monkey over there with a stick. Um, we just didn't have the knowledge. We never saw what war was about until World War one, World War Two when we had black and white and then we've got videos in World War Two in color and the impact of war. That was why it was the war to end all wars because the horror of it, we removed that, that romanticism of it. Uh, and we figured out it was just young people. Um, you know, governments playing on young, testosterone fueled men to go off on these adventures and kill people. We lost the ability with, with the, when the internet came into the world, when when telephones, when people, the world become a whole lot bigger that we, you couldn't just put a poster up of the turk. You know, the evil big or the jew, the big evil big nosed jew that was stealing everyone's gold.

You couldn't vilify a country with a couple of posters, but now with the amount of um access we have to information. Um, you're gonna probably see two fold probably less hate. I would say harder to galvanize a country to a particular objective to see it through. We just don't, we don't have the staying power. We don't have the hate built behind it. And I suppose maybe the second one is the horror that you'll see from these events. Um, in people's tv feeds and stuff. I mean it's, it's four K footage of of war. We've never seen this in our lives. I think it's gonna have a massive impact. Yeah, I agree. Yes. Yeah. It's definitely gonna have an impact. I mean there's, I think there's a few different ways it can go. Um, part of me is like the majority of the world is at war and there's people dying in poverty all day every day and we're living in this western bubble. It's fun. It's about time, people in the west sitting in their lounge rooms on social media, get a little bit of reality and see like the horrors of the world and maybe that will help inform better opinions when they come to vote.

But I mean the other, the other scary thought is like that we've seen it through from Hollywood, like time and time again, like movies about the future where reality tv shows of soldiers killing each other is a thing and I'm like, is this setting the platform for people to through exposure, be, not just okay with witnessing combat fatalities but crave it to the point where some sick fucky in Russia or wherever in the eastern bloc decides that I'm not only going to start live streaming, but I'm going to start deliberately trying to kill people on camera cause it's making me money. Um, and yeah, I think that's something that we need to keep an eye on. More than likely the big media companies or the big social media companies and google and stuff are probably tracking that already. And that kind of brings me to the, the real scary part of it is this is going to be super unpopular and it's going to be unpopular to any veterans listening. I have controversial opinions and almost anything, but I think this is one of the greatest propaganda exercises we've seen in our kind of life definitely.

I mean, I don't know how much propaganda was pushed in America around the invasions of Iraq and stuff, but within a week of Russia invading the Ukraine and just to be as as a kind of prefix, I don't have a dog in this fight. I'm just looking at it from a standpoint of going what is actually going on here because I don't have any trust in most media companies. We have seen nothing but Ukraine side of the story. Um, we saw the minute Russia went across the border, there was preloaded prerecorded propaganda packages that hit every mainstream channel in the western world, of the Ukrainian president who is an actor, um, telling stories of how hard done by they are and how evil the Russians are. Is that true? I have absolutely no idea, I can assume. I mean I've been watching a lot of this live stuff too when you take, I reckon there's probably evil people on both sides, There's definitely corrupt governments on both sides of that border. There is definitely influence from Western nations through NATO poking the bear in the chest and the bear said fuck you, it's time to go and now rushes in the Ukraine.

I mean all of that has to be taken to account again, don't have a dog in the fight. But I I don't know when you see these propaganda packages and you've got people paying attention to conflict now in real time, the whole world is picking a side and saying that Russia is super evil. Russia's still got kids in the army that don't want to be there. Russia has officers that don't want to follow waters like this is a government problem. There's two governments that hate each other and young people are dying for it as they always have. Um, is America partly to blame because they've got like I love american people, I fucking despise american politicians starting to form the same opinion in my own country. Like Australian people I think are fantastic. But politicians, I don't know where their values lie anymore. So we've got to be careful. I think all of this, we have got live feeds of people killing each other in combat. And we're picking aside and we're choosing who's good, who's bad, who's right and who's wrong based on a combination of that and the media message we're getting. And I think it's dangerous because the winner tells, tells the story through history.

Russia is very much nazi Germany at the moment in the West Eyes, which leads you to question like yes from history, Hitler was an evil person. How many of the soldiers underneath him? We're wishing they were born in a different country. How many how much of that was propaganda? How much of that history was propaganda written by the allies? I don't know, it just makes me question things and I want people to be very careful about watching propaganda that will, over the next year or two villainous, all Russian people, We went to war against what I thought was an evil religion. I have very different opinions on Islam now and there is flaws absolutely floors but we were the propaganda from 9-11, through till a couple of years ago, was that every Muslim was even we have to go over there and eradicate evil and you start to believe it. And that kind of propaganda message. If the West is going to pick a side and they're going to go in and back Ukraine in order to get soldiers to go and fight Russians, they are going to have to convince us that all Russians are evil and they're going to do that slowly over time to the point where we're brainwashed to believe it.

And everyone, every noncommissioned soldier in the Russian army, well not everyone, I can't speak for them, but most of those guys are not evil, they're just kids who made the wrong choice and join the Fun cup career. Um, So yeah, I think we're at a weird point in time and it's it's it's getting dangerous if we start to I like exposing people to the reality of war. But I also think it's dangerous the way we're heading. Yeah, you make a good point there. And and like I mentioned earlier that book that I read prisoners of geography kind of predicted what's happening right now. Um and it gives a lot more context. So, you know, as you said, it's been mentioned numerous times and podcasts, like people live in an echo chamber. And if you never challenge those thoughts, then you never get the opportunity to see the other side. And like, I definitely don't condone what Russia is doing. But given the context and from what I understand of the last decade. Um and provocations and issues that haven't been resolved, that Putin has been asking for to, you know, to to occur that haven't occurred.

Like it's kind of gotten to a point where like he has no other option. I'm sure he's got other options, but you know, he's at the point where he's like all right. Well you know NATO is pushing closer and closer. The borders are getting smaller so on so forth. Like I don't have a choice now but to go on the attack like offense is the best defense, right? And this is something that people don't understand and they don't have that context. All they're seeing is what's unfolding right now. But there's you know, there's a long history there two brilliant facts in that number one was when when when the USSR fell. And and I think when Putin finally got into government 90 early nineties um he asked the U. N. Sorry. He asked NATO if he could become a member of the of NATO and they said no and they said you stand whatever reason they gave they said your standard of living isn't within NATO's tolerance. You can't be part of NATO. He's like okay well can we call it the european army and we just make an army where all of europe comes together and we can like no no you can't be part of it. It's like cool okay cool cool. And then NATO started advancing across towards the west and the biggest thing that I like to give people examples.

You remember when um North Korea tested one of their first I. C. B. M. S. That could reach I think you could reach the east coast of Australia or something that were up in arms and people are spinning up contingencies to invade north Korea because we had an I. C. B. M. That could reach Australia. Well when they put when if NATO, if if Ukraine become a NATO country Um they could they will put nuclear weapons that have a flight time of four minutes to Moscow. Uh and Putin was like and after I think it was seven different advances NATO made over the last 20 years. And Putin was like can you please stop doing that? Did another country, can you please stop doing that in another country? And that's what people don't understand. It's like there has been these negotiations and there have there have been these conversations before man but people don't understand that context. All they see is what's happening right now and they're they're you know like I said I'm not condoning what Russia has done or what they're doing. But there's a lot more context to um consider with what's unfolding here. You know you look back at you know the Cuban missile crisis.

It's exactly the same thing. But you know now the sides roles have been reversed. Well they invaded straight at the bay of pigs, Cuban missile crisis like massive. I think it's just funny how I mean I'm just as bad for it. I'll get and I'll have an opinion about anything but you see people who can't balance their checkbook or we'll figure out, you know how to how to manage their week and then they want to get into geopolitical situations and and work on politics. Just have a look at it and try and look behind the lens and don't get your information from a single source. Remember that single unreliable single source reporting? You're probably going to get sucked up mate. It's yeah we've it's the it's the perfect kind of tinderbox ready to explode for the entire world. I mean that's what I thought World War three was a sure thing. I think we've done we've done pretty well to avoid it so far. But if you get an entire society for two years locked in their houses um slowly but surely separating the the elite class from the rest of the slaves and the slaves are sitting in their houses for two years just absorbing fucking garbage through their phone. Um And then the one thing that changes the media cycle is this evil dude in Russia invading Ukraine.

And the first day google turns off Russia like no data, no information, no media streaming, nothing is coming out of Russia. Um We're gonna believe we're just gonna sit there. We've already adapted over two years to just be staring at phones consuming garbage and we're like alright there's more garbage coming but now it's coming from the Ukraine. It's all true. I hate Russia. Now let's go and again fun. It's frustrating when you don't don't let me go down this tender too far. But to see I get it like I get the boys that have been in fucking gunfights, the idea of going over there and supporting the Ukrainian, it's sexy but fuck me dead. I don't understand how anyone from our generation could look at that and go, I have objectively looked at this scenario from both angles and I'm going in to support Ukraine, like I just think that's absurd, might give you're getting one, we're getting one side of the story and we've been very well groomed for for a few years now to accept the evil villain and and just look the other way, everything must be true.

It's not Yeah, Yeah, I could go down this rabbit hole but I do need to call this conversation. I've got a client in 30 minutes and it's a 25 minute drive. So uh fellas been absolute pleasure. Always loved chatting to you guys. I really appreciate your time sharing with me sharing with the audience what Swiss states doing. Um I'll have all of your links in the show notes. Um lads, love your work, really appreciate you guys, cheers mate. Thanks for having me, cheers boys. This episode was brought to you by Swiss eight, which is a proactive mental health program designed by veterans initially for veterans that has been pushed out to the wider community that allows you to structure in and schedule their eight pillars of health and wellness, including nutrition, sleep, time management, discipline, fitness, personal growth, mindfulness and minimalism. This episode was also brought to you by be spunky, which is a male hormone optimization supplement that I've been taking for about a year and a half now. Absolutely rate. It is a TJ listed nutraceutical, meaning that it's made from all organic produce to help you manage and optimize your stress levels, which in turn increases your ability to improve testosterone production levels naturally.

User code codes 10 at checkout for your 10% discount. All of those links will be in the show notes. If you've got some benefit from this episode, please make sure you pass it off to your friends and family. I'd appreciate any shares on social media platforms. If you tag me or if you share it to your stories, make sure you tag me so I can share that as well. Any five star ratings and reviews are much appreciated. Much love guys Peace.

Tribe. Routine. Identity. Purpose. A Swiss 8 Update.
Tribe. Routine. Identity. Purpose. A Swiss 8 Update.
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