From the sprawling cattle stations of Australia to the pinnacle of Olympic gold, John's journey through life is as captivating as it is enlightening. His tales are not just of personal triumphs and challenges, but also a treasure trove of wisdom on the symbiotic relationship between our well-being and our surroundings. Join us as we unravel John's life story, discovering the keys to unlocking our own potential along the way. His experience in high-performance coaching is a testament to the fact that the pursuit of wellness is not just physical, but a deeply spiritual quest too.
Imagine pushing the limits of the human spirit, both on the track and in the depths of consciousness. That's the essence of this dialogue, where we explore the rigorous mental conditioning of athletes juxtaposed with spiritual awakening. The narrative unfolds to reveal how curiosity and a commitment to mental fitness can ignite transformation, as much as any strenuous workout. And as we navigate this landscape, we share stories from the Global Wellness Summit and our strides toward shaping a world more attuned to well-being.
Finally, we tackle the delicate dance of masculine-feminine dynamics in a world where traditional roles are in flux, and how this evolution impacts relationships and self-perception. Our conversation stretches from the practicalities of fostering healthy relationships to the philosophical musings on kindness and the ripple effects of our actions. If you're seeking to navigate the waves of change in today's society, or simply want to enrich your understanding of human wellness, this episode will leave you with a compass to chart your course.
Thank you for listening to the Limitless Healing podcast with Colette Brown! It would mean the world if you would take one minute to follow, leave a 5 star review and share with those you love!
From the sprawling cattle stations of Australia to the pinnacle of Olympic gold, John's journey through life is as captivating as it is enlightening. His tales are not just of personal triumphs and challenges, but also a treasure trove of wisdom on the symbiotic relationship between our well-being and our surroundings. Join us as we unravel John's life story, discovering the keys to unlocking our own potential along the way. His experience in high-performance coaching is a testament to the fact that the pursuit of wellness is not just physical, but a deeply spiritual quest too.
Imagine pushing the limits of the human spirit, both on the track and in the depths of consciousness. That's the essence of this dialogue, where we explore the rigorous mental conditioning of athletes juxtaposed with spiritual awakening. The narrative unfolds to reveal how curiosity and a commitment to mental fitness can ignite transformation, as much as any strenuous workout. And as we navigate this landscape, we share stories from the Global Wellness Summit and our strides toward shaping a world more attuned to well-being.
Finally, we tackle the delicate dance of masculine-feminine dynamics in a world where traditional roles are in flux, and how this evolution impacts relationships and self-perception. Our conversation stretches from the practicalities of fostering healthy relationships to the philosophical musings on kindness and the ripple effects of our actions. If you're seeking to navigate the waves of change in today's society, or simply want to enrich your understanding of human wellness, this episode will leave you with a compass to chart your course.
Thank you for listening to the Limitless Healing podcast with Colette Brown! It would mean the world if you would take one minute to follow, leave a 5 star review and share with those you love!
In Health, Colette
Colette Brown:
Welcome to the Limitless Healing Podcast, where everyone is welcome to take a front row seat and listen in on inspiring conversations, stories of healing and action steps to help you live your best life. My name is Colette Brown and I am passionate about all things wellness mind, body, soul. Inspired by my own personal transformation from unwell and not knowing where to turn to thriving and flourishing, and motivated to help you do the same, I share this platform with medical doctors, wellness practitioners, chronic illness survivors, meditation and mindfulness gurus, innovators of products from food to technology and more. Think of it as a one-stop shop for wellness resources where you can listen to professionals from around the world to help you thrive. Join me Mondays and Wednesdays while sipping a cup of tea or making your favorite meal, as we explore the world of wellness together. This is the Limitless Healing Podcast.
Colette Brown:
Our next guest I met through the Global Wellness Summit in Miami and he is the global chair of the Workplace Wellbeing Initiative. He's also an international speaker, writer and thought leader. He's a high performance role in training professional athletes, including seven years at the AFL, which is the Australian football league club, and he's also coached an Olympic gold medalist. He has a degree in applied physiology from Victoria University. He is a human consciousness leader and he taught for 15 years and he's delivered over 3,500 corporate presentations. He's spoken at conferences worldwide. You get the point. This man is absolutely amazing worldwide. You get the point. This man is absolutely amazing. He's present, he's conscious and he is going to share his wealth of his experience and life with us today. I'm so excited to welcome John to me.
John Toomey:
Welcome, John hey Collette. Thank you, how are you doing?
Colette Brown:
I'm well and, by the way, all the way from Australia, you're down under right now. I am down under. Yes, it's a Friday morning here, so it's from.
John Toomey:
Australia. You're down under right now. I am down under. Yes, it's a Friday morning here, so it's yeah, we're not far away, though.
Colette Brown:
We're not too far away Never. So we met at the Global Wellness Summit and I just want to say I never knew about the Australian Football League and you showed me what that's about and these are some big guys and you're a big guy and it was. It's fascinating because you make a presence when you walk into a room and you have a heart of gold and your energy and consciousness and presence just precedes you and it's really fascinating, and so we got to know each other a little bit there, along with other members of the summit. So I wanted to share a little bit about you with the world today, because you are doing so many amazing things. So take us back. First I want to snapshot into your childhood. So where did you grow up? Was it in Australia? If so, where? And what was either a favorite childhood memory or a memory that you believe has projected and taken you on this journey into where you're at today?
John Toomey:
That's a great question. When I was born, my parents were running a 30,000 acre cattle station, which in America you would call a ranch. Okay, it was in central Queensland. It was the type of land where you could cook an egg on a rock during the day and then freeze that same egg on that same rock at night Very clear skies, and it was really interesting. My mum's parents founded that station, so my grandfather. It's great stories that I use today because he and his brothers they built their own houses. They fenced the properties. That's hard, fencing is hard. Yeah, they tamed wild country and you just consider their lives and how difficult they were.
Colette Brown:
Oh yeah.
John Toomey:
Oh yeah, and my dad, who was a Melbourne city slicker. My mom and dad got a letter from her parents saying to them would you consider managing this station? And my dad said, yeah, I'll have a go at that they met in the city.
John Toomey:
Your mom went to college, or how did that happen? My mom was away from home working as a nurse, so her first placement when she finished her training was right up in the Gulf of Carpentaria, right up in far North Queensland, and my dad at the time was a tobacco buyer and there's a lot of tobacco crops up there. So they were introduced on a blind date.
Colette Brown:
Okay, okay.
John Toomey:
And they were back down in Victoria and anyway. So my dad thought, yeah, that'd be fun learning how to run a cattle station. He couldn't even ride a horse, but he did it and he nailed it and anyway. So I was born there. One of my sisters was born there, one brother I ended up with. I've got eight siblings, and because there's no television out there, right, and anyway, when I was 10 years old they sold up in Queensland and bought a pub in the heart of Melbourne. So we moved from country Queensland to the heart of Melbourne. That was pretty wild, yeah, you bet.
Colette Brown:
Wrangling cows to wrangling people.
John Toomey:
Yeah, exactly, and so as a kid, one of the great things on a Saturday morning, because after we they sold the cattle station when I was three, then we had time at a dairy farm and then we had a small country pub in Queensland. Great childhood memories would be, at the age of eight, nine years of age, getting up early on a Saturday morning because we'd heard that there was a dam somewhere out that direction out of town that had really good yabbies in the dam. We would load up with billies.
Colette Brown:
What are yabbies and what are billies? They're like yabbies are freshwater crayfish. Oh, okay.
John Toomey:
Okay, they're quite small and they're halfway. They're bigger than a prawn.
Colette Brown:
And billies.
John Toomey:
Yeah, and we would just head out in that direction and we would find that dam. What are billies? Like a tin can that you use to boil water in?
Colette Brown:
Okay, okay, so got the billies to get the yabbies.
John Toomey:
Yeah, so then we would light a fire and we would cook the yabbies and we would eat them for lunch, and the only rule our parents had for us was be home by dark. They had no clue what we were doing, it was just childhood adventure. It was amazing. Yeah, that was fun life.
Colette Brown:
Wow, wow. Adventure, it was amazing. Yeah, that was fun life, wow, wow. So as a child, did you see this trajectory of going into like sports medicine and or did that kind of happen organically?
John Toomey:
As a young kid I started swimming, used to go to swimming club it was a small town and also played rugby league and I loved that. So my mate and I used to go jogging in the mornings. So there was a little bit of that. And when I moved to Melbourne I just got intoxicated with Australian football and cricket. So my mates and I used to train a lot.
John Toomey:
But it wasn't until I was in my final year at school. I was at a private boys' grammar school and I was the football captain. Everything about my existence was sport. But I was also more passionate about sport and I didn't have a lot of attention on career. And so when it came to putting my university preferences down, I just put hotel management down, because I knew how to do that and I thought, oh, that'll be easy.
John Toomey:
And then, at the very last minute, it was just such a spontaneous thing where I had to fill out my final set of forms and one of the teachers grabbed me and said Johnny, we need your forms. And so I went into a room and sat down and pulled out the crumpled up sheet out of my bag typical schoolboy's bag and I said have you got the book with the course codes and he said sure, and he threw it across the room and it's landed on the table and slid and fell on the floor face down open. And I picked it up and turned it over and it was open at Physical Education, rusden College, and I went, oh, what's that? And I had a read and I thought, oh, that looks interesting. So I put that down as the first preference and then I put all the hotel management courses down and I snuck into that course by a half a mark it was meant to be.
Colette Brown:
It was meant to be.
John Toomey:
So funny, isn't it? Somehow, I think, your higher self gets you there. Yes and yeah. So that's where it all started. Then I just was fascinated and met amazing people and I realized my life could flourish in an area where I had passion.
Colette Brown:
Yeah, yeah, just to give our international listeners just a little bit of a snapshot into what the AFL looks like, can you describe the court? Because when you were coaching these athletes and you're helping them with mindset and the physical training, just tell them the difficulty of the sport and the resilience that they need and give us a snapshot into what that looks like in the mind of an athlete and how you would encourage them.
John Toomey:
Yeah, so interesting. So when Australian rules football was first invented, it was a crossover between a game that the Aboriginals used to play, that the white people observed, and then, of course, they're all from the UK, so they're all rugby mad. So this game got created, and the only fields that they had at the time that was suitable to play a game were cricket fields, and cricket fields are very large, and so the and there's no set dimensions for an AFL stands for Australian Football League, and the game is actually called Australian Rules Football.
Colette Brown:
Okay.
John Toomey:
And so the pitches tend to be around in American terms, 200 yards long, about 180 yards wide, and they're oval-shaped, and so there's a lot of ground there to cover. And so when the players run out in the field there's 18 players per team they're spread all over the field. There's no offside or anything like that, and the aim is to kick the ball between vertical sticks and so these vertical posts. If the ball goes between the two central posts, it's six points. If it hits the main upright posts, it's one point. If it goes between the main uprights and the smaller posts, it's one point. The scores can be pretty high and the game is very fast and it's very dynamic, and the ball is halfway between a rugby ball and an American football and the guys kick with amazing precision on either foot. The ball moves a little bit like it does in soccer. There's tackling. If somebody's within five meters of the ball, you can body slam them. It's just, it's full on.
Colette Brown:
It's very and so and no protective gear, by the way.
John Toomey:
Nothing, no, nothing, because that just slows you down, right, right. And these players.
Colette Brown:
They look like a soccer game where the movement is really fast, but they're very sturdy. You can't be wispy to play this game. I don't think.
John Toomey:
You can't. Some are, but they're just people who have got amazing sensory arrays and they don't tend to get hit very often. But the thing about the sport is the players have got to have profound endurance because the game goes for 120 minutes and they can run 11 or 12 miles in a game, but they have to be able to run. They have to be really quick, so they've got to have speed. They've also got to be able to leap, they've also got to have the physical strength to tackle and to ward off tackles and also they've got to be robust enough to handle all the collisions and the robustness. And so it's a really tough sport to train athletes for and to give them the right mix of conditioning so they get to where they need to get to. But the game can be profoundly spectacular and, as I was saying to you before the podcast, there was a great quote that I read once that said if I had my time over the game, I was meant to play as Australian rules football, and that was Michael Jordan who said that.
Colette Brown:
Yeah, that's pretty amazing. So when you would work with these athletes, what would be your number one priority in conditioning them mentally to handle the physical and what was probably the most difficult part for you when dealing with them on this component of the mental game?
John Toomey:
Yeah, we'll see the conditioning. Sometimes we would have to take them to hellish places without breaking them down, and that's the really important thing with athletes where they've got to have incredible aerobic capacity, but you've got to do that without leaving them neurologically fatigued, muscular fatigued, too heavily fatigued. So we would have to devise ways of getting them to those levels of intensity, and so we would mix it around a little bit and sometimes we would just do these hellish sessions in the pool swimming. Other times we'd create things like, for example, in the off season the season runs from the start of March through until the end of September and the teams play 22 games in a season, and so in the off season, between the end of October and Christmas, that's when we need to put a foundation under them. So sometimes we would set a goal for them, for example, pre-season.
John Toomey:
This wouldn't be done anymore because the games evolved further and the players being full-time, et cetera. But what they would do on the last training session before Christmas? They would have to run 100, 100s. So they'd get out and we'd set them up on a 100-metre running track and they would have to run through, and they'd have to get through it in under 17 seconds and they'd start a new one every minute. So it's just and that was just for them the mental warfare of getting through it and being able to drive themselves to make that decision to run hard every 45 seconds, and we would use those sorts of things to help them develop that ability to overcome their fear of because when you go to those hellish places in training it's frightening because a lot of pain and those sorts of things would help them and some of them would eat that stuff for breakfast and others it was hard work to keep them moving, yeah.
Colette Brown:
Yeah, so you're doing this and you're immersed in this world and then at some point you stumble upon I guess it was through the mindset, but you'll have to tell me how that happened but getting into the avatar work and the more like the spirituality aspect of what you do today, yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?
John Toomey:
I was raised Catholic and I laugh about how Catholic I was because at the Catholic schools my dad's brother was a monsignor, my mom's sisters are nun. And when I was 12, because my uncle was a bit of an operator I was altar boy for the Pope. But when I was 21, I was standing in church and one morning and I looked at my watch and I realized I just looked at my watch for the sixth time in five minutes and I thought I'm done, I'm not even present here. So I walked out and I never, ever went back. But when I was five years old and I was sitting in school and, as a tall kid, sitting down the back, and the nuns were giving us that lesson about how God created heaven and earth and did it all in six days and that's a profound thing to tell a five-year-old kid I sat there and I was like wow, and I put my hand up and the nun said, yes, the boy down the back. And I said, sister, if God created it all in six days, what was there before? It was there. And she looked at me with disdain. I'll never forget that. Look on old sister Finbar's face. She said God's silly. And so I spent the next 40 years trying to figure out what that looked like. So I was always curious and it was really interesting.
John Toomey:
Jacqueline Onassis was a journalist the very first time she met John F Kennedy. She said to him what would be your superpower? And she thought he was going to say courage. And he said it was curiosity. And when you listen to RFK talk about his uncle, he said that was what made him a great president. And I've got to say that curiosity has been mine. I can't stop following something until I understand it.
John Toomey:
And anyway, I had always been a seeker and thinking what's this thing called enlightenment? How do you wake up? And I used to meditate and I was impatient with it. And then one day I went to a meeting and there was a woman in the meeting and she had this presence about her and I just I couldn't get my attention off it. And I followed up later and I found out that she was an avatar master and I had no clue what that was. But today I call it America's greatest export.
John Toomey:
And I went and found a website and had a look and I thought and I was 45 and my life wasn't going where I wanted it to go and I thought I'm going to go do that course. It obviously works. And so I walked into a course room. It's a nine day experient, experiential program, exploring consciousness, and no lectures, no charismatic dudes up the front of the room, and on the morning of the last day I woke up. It was profound. You never forget that moment. And so then I went on straight away to do the advanced trainings and I taught the course for a long time and my kids have done all the courses and they're all parents now and they're awake and their kids are in it. They've chosen a good path. Yeah, so that really set me up and helped me to step into the world where I can be really present and not have my mind running off in some different direction. I live my life with a very quiet mind and a peaceful heart and I feel happy all the time. So that's a lovely place to be.
Colette Brown:
Yeah, feel happy all the time, so it's a lovely place to be. Yeah, so if someone's feeling restless right now and they've tried meditation and they can't, they just don't, they don't have the patience for it, what do you tell those people?
John Toomey:
The really interesting thing is that meditation was invented without any clue what a 21st century mind would look like.
John Toomey:
We live in a time where the stimulation and what's going on in our minds it's probably the greatest time of spiritual challenge ever, and I would say a genuine spiritual path is one that takes to a point where your mind hands back control of your life to your being, to your spirit, your higher self however you want to define that and I think that more than ever, people's minds are overwhelmed.
John Toomey:
And just to try to sit and meditate all that's going on in the world, it's really challenging and the really cool part about the Avatar course is it just starts at a very simple place and just goes through this beautiful gradient where you just integrate all of those things that are sitting there deep in the roots of your consciousness. That keeps stirring your mind up and eventually you get to that point where it's all gone. But it's a bit like fitness. I know you love your training. You can get fit enough to run a marathon, for example, and you can run your marathon and that's great. But you can't stop training. If you want to maintain that fitness, you've got to continue to do the work.
Colette Brown:
It's the same with the mind, and it doesn't stop with just one thing or one time.
John Toomey:
Yeah, it's great. It's all about thatars. You've got the tools and you've fully experienced what it is to have your mind calm and quiet and for your awareness to be very broad, and so whenever you feel yourself losing that, you just get it back really quickly. Just use some of the tools and you're back.
Colette Brown:
Yeah, that's exciting, so I'll put a link in the show notes. We'll share something on how to learn more about that and tell us what you're doing with the Global Wellness Summit and the initiative and the workplace wellbeing. What does that look like?
John Toomey:
Yeah. So the Global Wellness Summit is run by the Global Wellness Institute, which is an extraordinary organization, one of the world's premier bodies for the dissemination of evidence-based wellness material, and one of the ideas they came up with some years ago was to create initiatives that specialize in particular areas of wellness and to invite professionals from around the world to volunteer their time to participate in those initiatives. And back at the end of 2019, I was invited to join the Workplace Wellbeing Initiative, which was populated by some amazing people, and in February 2020, I was invited to be the vice chair of that initiative. And then, in August 2020, when Renee Moorfield was stepping down as chair, she just said to me it's yours now. That was very democratic. And she said August 2020, when Renee Moorfield was stepping down as chair, she just said to me it's yours now. That was very democratic. And she said yep, it's as democratic as it gets.
John Toomey:
And so I realized that that was a role with profound responsibility, and I thought who are the young people out there in the industry who've got fire in their belly that are doing great stuff? So I went looking and I got into the corporate health groups on LinkedIn. I started scanning through and I found just a handful of just really bright young women who were just Danielle Poser over in Florida and Elizabeth Buckrard in the UK and Jessica Grosmeier in California, and I invited all these people to come onto this initiative and now we've got 24 people on the initiative and they're spread all over the world, including places like Nigeria and Congo, and they're just doing Jessica Saigan in Sweden just incredible people, and my role really is to just is to bring them together and support them and come up with great ideas. And last november, we put on our world workplace well-being online summit, where we started at 8 am pacific time in the us and we delivered 24 sessions, moving from west to east and we went all the way around the globe and my god, and we found some incredible people doing incredible work. We brought them all together and all the recordings are now available online. So it's just this amazing content generating thing that does two things delivers great stuff to the world, but also extends the reach of the Global Wellness Institute Institute.
John Toomey:
And so, extending on from that, one of our team, rachel Riggs, who's very much in the event industry over there, she brought Caesars to the table and they sponsored our event because Caesars now wanting to really expand their wellness offering so that when people run conferences at any of Caesars venues, they get really good menus and everything else they can provide to make it a wellness experience. And so now we're teaming up with Caesars and they're actually going to run a conference in June in Las Vegas for all their event planners and we're going to help them with that. And so we're getting to do some really fun things, and I think I will have done four years by the end of this year. So I'm going to hand it over to Jessica Grossmeier and let this bunch of incredible people take it to the next level, and then I'm going to create an initiative for men's health. So that'll be fun.
Colette Brown:
I love that. That's really important. I just had a great podcast guest yesterday, Jake Hoffman, and he's working with men and trying to give them a group of men and also taking them to places of there's a lot of addiction in different areas of life, and what is it that you're masking by that addiction and how do? You look at the pain point and so it's fascinating, like that's so needed. I'm so happy to hear that you're doing that. That's wonderful. So tell us a little bit about your book that you wrote.
John Toomey:
Yes, in Australia we have workers that we call FIFO workers F-I-F-O and for the accountants out there it's not what you think it means. So it's fly in, fly out. Australia's got a big mining industry and lots of remote territory. There's less people in Australia than there is in California, but the land mass is nearly as large as the United States.
John Toomey:
And most of the populations are concentrated on the eastern seaboard. You know, 50% of Australia's population is in Melbourne, sydney and Brisbane Wow. And so all these mine sites out in regions of the Pilbara and the Gascoyne in Western Australia, and so there's over 200,000 workers that work, whether they go, and they work maybe 10 or 12 or 14 days on and then six or 10 days off, so they're flying in and fly out, and some people think it's a new industry. People have been working remotely all over the world for generations. But anyway, there's a lot of mental health challenges out there. They get paid really well. Some of them don't know how to manage their money, they end up in financial troubles or their relationships start to fall apart, and so there's a lot of suicides. And so I thought how can I do this? And I ran a bit of a survey and I realized that 60% of the workers that go out there, they go out with no plan.
John Toomey:
They just think it's all going to work. So I decided to write a book. The book is called In it for the Long Haul and it's all about learning how to make FIFO a more productive lifestyle. But I've put a lot of self-development stuff into that as well to really help people grow. And it's interesting, I've got a good friend who's a morning news anchor over there in Los Angeles. She's in Southern California and she wants to have a chat to me on her show about the book Cause she said to me John, we don't call them BIFO workers in America, but there's lots of them who travel and work remotely. Yeah, That'll be interesting.
Colette Brown:
Yeah, that's amazing. So it's not just for those that do it, but this is actually a guide that you can use in your own life, and there's always something to glean from someone else's knowledge and wisdom and vantage points. Where can they find that book?
John Toomey:
There's a website directly for the book, because it's available in print or ebook or audio book, and the website is just called initforthelonghaulcomau. Yeah, and I'm working on another book now. That's purely a similar book, but it'll be just for construction workers, and when I write, I don't just write with the worker in mind, I write with their partner in mind as well, because it's a team effort, because there's, for example, it's Friday now. I got a message from my daughter's partner a couple of days ago and he would. He just listened to my first podcast and he said John, we're going to do something. He said there's four construction workers in Melbourne have taken their lives since last Thursday. Wow, wow, yeah. So it's yeah, we've got a lot of work to do in that space there is, and tell us a little bit about your podcast.
John Toomey:
Yeah, I've got a really good mate who's an Australian guy. He's lived in Seattle for 40 years or he lived in America for 40 years and he's giving me a hard time about the name of the podcast. He said, oh, people are not going to like that podcast. It's called Good Bloke, not Woke.
Colette Brown:
Okay, tell us about it.
John Toomey:
Yeah, so it's really about exploring healthy masculinity. Because you talk about men and Jay and the work he's doing. It's like men have lost their way. See, we've got to look at what do people do in their life that leaves them feeling good about who they are. Grandfather earlier, overcoming difficulties and problems, using their ingenuity and their physical strength to make everything okay for everybody around them is what drives a man's soul.
John Toomey:
But we've got to a point in our society now where men, there's none of those things, like you can't even use cables to start somebody's car for them, because you might blow up the computer in the car or changing tires just things that men used to do as a favor to help somebody out. That would leave them feeling like good about themselves. They're all gone. Like, for example, if you wanted to do something in your home, you just get on a website, airtask or something like that, get somebody to come around and do it for you. You don't need to wait for a man. So this has been such a profound change in the consciousness of men and it's happened really rapidly and a lot of men are lost and they can't find things to do that are helping them to feel good about themselves. Plus, we've then got the rise of femininity, which has been amazing and so exciting, with women really stepping up and showing their best talents in the world, and men are battling with that. They're not sure how to do it and they can be cumbersome and they can open their mouths and say stupid things and they get labeled with things like toxic masculinity or privileged white male or all those sorts of things, and so I want to help them and I'm doing it through the podcast, through instruction, and also interviewing really good people, men and women and exploring this whole concept, because I defined healthy masculinity as developing a strong and robust moral compass and then having the courage to live by it, and you could say that probably describes healthy family as well.
John Toomey:
So really it's coming back to what are the elements of being a good, happy, content, inspired human being. So that's what the podcast is about, and I've had amazing feedback from the first one, which was basically just me talking, introducing the podcast and talking about what it's going to be about. I've got some interviews lined up over the next few days to start building this content and we can deliver a good service, and I put the not woke in there as a sort of a bit of a, I suppose, the tension grabber, because I understand the original foundation of what woke was it's about being compassionate and caring and that sort of stuff. But it's gone off into some strange places in some realms and I don't want this to be about that. This is about just good human consciousness rediscovering what it means to live a life.
Colette Brown:
Yeah, it's interesting too because, as you said, females are rising into themselves and positions, and there's also a downside to that, because we can lose our femininity and the need to ask for help.
Colette Brown:
And we need to ask for help and I would say that's one of my weak points is raising my hand and asking. It's really hard for me to do that, but the more that mounds on top of me, the more it's like it makes me surrender and ask. But we don't need to get to that point and I think, understanding that dynamics, what do you think is that balance for today? Of that masculine? Is that balance for today of that masculine feminine exchange and and men knowing how do they support their partners who are very independent, and how do independent women cater to that? Their man needs to be able to provide and do something for them too. And there's just and then there's everything, all the noise in the world of saying you can do it yourself, women, you don't need a man, which I don't think is there. Whatever your preference is, it doesn't matter to me, but there is undeniably an exchange of masculine feminine energy, in whatever dynamic it is, and we need both. So what are your thoughts on that?
John Toomey:
Yeah well, we could spend an entire podcast on that one, so I'm going to summarize my thoughts on it. Firstly, life has changed so rapidly and human beings don't evolve that quickly, so we've got to give ourselves, cut ourselves some slack for the fact that the circumstances of life were so profoundly different to what they were even 50 years ago. And the fact is, humans just don't evolve that quickly. But if you look back, even 100, 150 years ago, people lived in smaller communities. Everybody knew each other and, purely because of survival factors, everybody had to have a certain amount of attention on the welfare of the people around them. So their care was just part of their natural daily life. But now you ask yourself who are the people around you in your community that are vulnerable, that may not have somewhere safe to sleep or haven't got food, and the answer is you probably can't name anybody. So our concerns for this physical survival of people around us are not part of our daily makeup.
John Toomey:
And so that tends to shut down our care for other people and it means that we live our life with nothing, dragging our attention out into the world.
John Toomey:
So we're not monitoring the world to look for possibilities where help might be needed, and so when life's not demanding our attention, it tends to come back to ourselves, and when that happens, too much attention goes into the mind and then we start being concerned about what's going on around us.
John Toomey:
Instead of then trusting the people who are around us, we start to develop concerns about what they think of us, and, because then we can start getting a bit of jail on other people as well, we create this whole dynamic in our mind. That's not even real, it's all imagination. It can get to the point where it can rule our lives. One of the things I say to men is that we've got to stop giving advice and we're going to start learning how to just hold a really safe space and, for example, if there's a man who's got a part in his life and she's dynamic and she's going places, you've got to make sure that a couple times a week you can create a space where you can just sit down and just be and not ask questions and not give advice but just enjoy that space, because women thrive on that connection, that undead, beautiful connection, where she can then feel whatever bubbles up is coming out of her mouth.
Colette Brown:
Yeah, that's true, that's true. And sometimes, yeah, I think for a man, they just need to let us write out our thoughts and and I can also say that that for me, like I, if I'm looking for advice, like I look, I do want advice sometimes, and so I think for a man to say would you like my opinion on that or would you like help on that? And if a woman says, no, I'm just talking, but if she says yes, please input your opinion. Yeah, exactly.
John Toomey:
But that's beautiful. Yeah, ask first, don't just download, because men, genetically they're problem solvers and as soon as you start talking about a problem, his mind's going to start producing solutions and he's got to learn how to just let those go past and wait for the moment to say would you like my perspective on that? And the other thing is it's really interesting Dan Buettner from the Blue Zones. Now Dan is a regular attendee at the Global Wellness Summit. He wasn't there last year because he was busy in Europe. But he's a great guy, he's a beautiful human being and he's done some amazing work.
John Toomey:
And I love his stories about the women of Okinawa in Japan. They are some of the longest living people on the planet and people keep saying, oh, it's because they eat a lot of seafood, it's because of this, because of that, but Dan doesn't think so. It's because these women form these friendship groups when they're in primary school or elementary school, as you would call it, and they carry those friendships through life and they get together most nights of the week, wow, and they talk and they drink, suck, and if they need to complain about their husbands, they do, and they laugh and they cry and do whatever. And the other thing I say to men is give your partner lots of space to hang out with her girlfriends, because she needs that. That's what women like to do, because she needs that. That's what women like to do, and not ask questions or not doubt it or not feel like you're being excluded. That's not what it's about. That's just what she needs and it's really important and to be okay with that.
Colette Brown:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a whole nother episode, which I think we should do because I would love your wisdom and perspective on helping to create a healthier dynamic between that masculine and feminine, because the world is changing at a fast pace and it's good to be able to show up and contribute and prevent that the mental torture that goes on in some people's minds, that lead to suicide and the addiction.
John Toomey:
Yeah, absolutely. I think, more than ever is almost trying to convince us to step back into following a spiritual path. Now, I'm not talking about religion here. For some people, religion might be their spiritual path. But follow a spiritual path and honor the depth of your being as opposed to the drama of your mind, and that takes a decision.
Colette Brown:
Yeah, yeah, you bet, yeah, yeah, beautiful. I ask all my guests a question at the end, which? Is if this was the last message that you had to broadcast out to the world, what would it be?
John Toomey:
I think my message would be whatever those things are that are concerning you, they're not important. What is important right now is that you remember how to just be really kind to other human beings, especially the people you don't know. And if you can really step into that today smiling at strangers, saying hello to people you've never met, and just being really good to other people and allowing them to feel your heart, that will change your life so profoundly. I can guarantee you that.
Colette Brown:
What a beautiful message that's profound. It seems like advice that everyone would just know, but it's not, and in the day-to-day and the rush and getting things done, we forget that. So thank you for that beautiful reminder. That's a beautiful message is there anything else you'd like to add to our time today?
John Toomey:
look.
John Toomey:
I just think that trust yourself, people, and if if there's areas that are not working in your life, just get very interested in them. Don't beat yourself up that's other people's job and just get really interested and get curious about why those things are not working, and you don't have to live by social norms, as you call it. I'm stepping outside of that realm now and I'm going to be living 50% of my life here in Melbourne and 50% of my life at Laguna Beach, and my partner and I are really looking forward to what it's going to look like. We've got no clue, but it's stepping into the unknown and just enjoying the adventure and sometimes dealing with that little issue that you've battled with all your life. Maybe you don't sleep well, maybe you're worried about how much you drink, maybe you've lost your health and you don't know how to get back into fitness. Instead of judging those things, just get curious and step into the unknown and you'll discover stuff. Then your life can be more fun than you beating yourself up in your own mind. Please don't do that.
Colette Brown:
Yes, that's so true. Okay, and then, how do people reach you?
John Toomey:
Yeah, I'm pretty easy to find on LinkedIn or my website is wideawakewellnesscomau.
Colette Brown:
And it's John Toomey, t-o-m-e-y, and I'll put everything in the show notes. John, it has been an absolute pleasure to have you today and sharing all the beauty that you're spreading in the world, and I can't wait to have you back on. Thank you, I appreciate it.
John Toomey:
Thank you, Collette, and I've got to tell you it was such a delight and a pleasure to meet you at the Global Wellness Summit. It was one of the highlights of the summit.
Colette Brown:
Thank you, john, so much, and everyone else. Until next time be well. Next time be well. You just finished another episode of limitless healing where we dive into all things wellness. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world to me If you would share it with your friends and family. Together we can plant seeds of hope that leads to transformation in our lives and the lives of those we love. Let's get healthy together.