Thrive Again - Your relationship podcast

From Hustle To Heart: Rewriting Masculinity with Andrew Boniface

• Michael & Amy • Season 1 • Episode 64

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What if the life that proves you’re winning is the same life that’s quietly draining the colour from your home, your body, and your heart? We invited our friend of 20 years, Andrew Boniface—dad to twin girls and former helicopter pilot—to share how the grind he once wore with pride became an addiction to stress that cost him his marriage and nearly his sense of self. His story isn’t polished; it’s honest. And in that honesty sits a map for any man who suspects constant urgency has replaced real connection.

Andrew takes us from the cockpit to the lounge room, showing how hustle culture rewires the nervous system, shrinks emotional range, and turns relationships into background noise. He explains the shift from fight or flight into rest and digest, and why slowing down is leadership, not laziness. We dig into men’s work, somatic practices, and the discipline of feeling what’s uncomfortable so joy can return. Along the way, we tackle people pleasing and the “covert contracts” that sabotage trust, replacing them with a simple, brave practice: know your needs and say them out loud.

We also walk through the realities of co‑parenting after separation, dating with kids in the mix, and setting timelines and expectations with care. Andrew shares how skills from high‑risk aviation—communication, teamwork, leadership—translate at home when guided by presence and heart. He’s now building programs for fathers and male‑dominated workplaces, and hosting dad retreats on the Sunshine Coast to lift men’s emotional fitness and family leadership.

If you’ve ever felt successful and strangely empty, this conversation offers language, tools, and hope. Listen to reframe performance around joy and connection, and to hear how a man can become the steady, loving presence his family craves. If it lands, subscribe, share with a mate, and leave a review—then tell us: what’s one place you’ll slow down this week?

Contact Andrew here: https://www.facebook.com/andrew.boniface.50

Thankyou for listening, if you liked it, please remember to subscribe.

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Website: https://michaelandamy.com.au/

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If you would like to book in a private discovery call with us, here is the link: https://michaelandamy.com.au/call

SPEAKER_04:

Today we have a treat, folks. A longtime friend of ours, Andrew Boniface, who is on a mission to help men shift from the hustle back to their heart, and he's helping dads to build the skills to lead themselves and their families with confidence, steadiness, and love. He's a proud father of eight-year-old twin girls. He draws from his background in human performance and over 15 years flying helicopters to share practical tools for emotional regulation, presence, and intentional communication. With humility and lived experience, Andrew creates down-to-earth spaces where men can step into the clearest and most grounded version of who they are, sparking cultural change in themselves, in their families, and their workplaces. Looking forward to this one. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_03:

We're Michael and Amy, your couples connecting culture. Our mission is to help couples thrive using a conscious and holistic approach. This podcast is for couples and singles who want to unlock their relationship potential and reconnect on a deeper, more meaningful soul level. We share insights, client breakthroughs, and personal stories to help move your relationship from surviving to thriving.

SPEAKER_04:

Alright, we've got a wonderful guest on today, Andrew, and I am honored to have known this man for 20 years. We were just having a chat before we started recording. And I know, Amy, you've known him for probably that long too. And it's been a wild ride where we've intertwined with each other at different phases of our lives. And I don't have many friends that I can say that I've known for that long that I'm still connected to in the way that we are. And Andrew's going to bring some absolute wisdom and lived experience that is no doubt going to help men and women to just realize a few things based on his own experience. And uh and yeah, just when we're talking in the context of relationships, I think if we can gain as much wisdom from others that have been in it, been in the trenches, and then re-emerged as a different person, then the better we're going to be. So welcome to the podcast, Andrew. It's so good to have you.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Amy. Absolute pleasure to be here. And yeah, I also love reflecting on the 20 years of history from um throwing frisbees in the park in London through to our times in Australia. So yeah, it's so good to be here with you guys.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, man, so many fond memories of those good old days. And um, and here we are now back in Queensland. And um, yeah, we're just gonna dive in because I think that there's so much that we can unpack. And I guess just in the context of a man in the modern era, and I'd love to start there because I just think that like there's so much on our shoulders right now. And I wanted to know from your perspective like how that affected you and your relationships, and and maybe how yeah, let's just start there. Let's start with how that actually affected you and your relationships and how society and the world has really kind of molded how you've turned up historically.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's a really great and far-reaching question. Um so for the audience, I'll speak from my own experience. And my marriage um ended approximately four years ago, and just a divorce has gone through recently with two beautiful eight-year-old girls. And what I found was probably the biggest hurdle for me just to dive straight into it, and really the way in which I can take a lot of responsibility for that relationship not working is succumbing to a lot of the hustle culture that I see uh within myself and and how I've been living the hustle culture and contributing to it, but also around me and with others. And what I mean by that is um I guess typically many years ago, maybe the stereotypes were that um, you know, man and woman would show up with different roles in the household, husband, wife, or from the same sex dynamic as well. You know, we'd be split off to different roles. And as time's gone on, uh, and particularly, you know, my experience with getting married, kids, etc., in the last 10, 15 years, uh, the need to increase the amount that we all do has rapidly increased. And I think that's happened for a few reasons. So from my own experience as a cost of living piece, uh, where you know both partners generally are working these days. Um there is very much, I guess, an idea of success that seems to be uh perpetuated throughout media and social media and culture generally, around, you know, success is money, it's material, it's uh status in the workplace. And unfortunately, what I saw happening within myself was very much succumbing to those things unconsciously, and the result of that was that then the things that I now know truly mattered didn't receive the full attention that they needed. And those things were the relationship with my wife at the time, uh, my children, community, and connection with all of those people, and and of course, friends in there are very important as well. So throughout all of that, um, I would say that my level of connection with myself really diminished from a a matter of being addicted to stress, addicted to the adrenaline that was coursing through my veins, and more chronically the cortisol. And with that, of course, my ability to emotionally regulate went down. My nervous system capacity was not as good. Um, and I was living from you know that that fight or flight um point of being or context, which was proven to me through different tests I did around my cortisol levels as a chronic indicator of stress. And uh and yeah, it it had a big impact on all of those things, but particularly my relationships, which started with the relationship with myself, and then of course my closest ones.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, man, this resonates so much. And I just got transported back to yeah, the period in my life where and I've never actually said it like that. I'm a I was addicted to stress. Like it's and and as a result of that, there was this destruction behind me that I actually didn't think that I caused. And so what you're saying is that there was this hyper-focused kind of response to work and yeah, importance and success, which then left some other things behind, including relationships with self and relationships with others. And I know that that's what I also experienced. And I uh you know, I remember specific times when yeah, Amy had called me out on some of that stuff, but I was still in absolute denial. Was that something that ran for you as well? Was there some elements of denial in there for you?

SPEAKER_00:

100%, mate. Yeah. Uh, and I do recall being quite defensive around certain conversations at that time as well, uh, based upon the narratives. I'm doing my best. Can't you see how flogged I am, how tired I am, um, can't you see the money coming into the bank account? Uh, little did I know that that was all coming from an unconscious place, largely in myself at the time, because um, you know, I the things being shared with me were very much around this is what the family needs, this is what the relationship needs, and I just wasn't listening. Um, the bit that I want to throw in there too, brother and Amy, is very much around um I think a lot of the underlying elements of this were not feeling as capable as a father or a husband and what that meant. Um, so I guess my experience was then I dove into what I could control the most, which was my profession as a helicopter pilot, and desperately trying to leap up the ladders, uh up the ladder and get different qualifications in that profession. Um, because I could control that and I could be good at that. Uh, whereas I felt the other areas were out of control, not knowing actually we can't control much other than what's right here inside of ourselves.

SPEAKER_03:

It's so interesting because I think what I've what I'm hearing there that you're um sharing, Andrew, is like there was an unconscious behaviour in you, like this unconscious kind of hustle culture that you were you were in. And I guess let's be honest, like we see a lot of our clients in that same culture and that same busyness, um, you know, I guess not prioritizing relationships with self and partner and children. But I'm curious to know what happened for you. What was it the relationship breakdown that you started to bring more awareness to that? Or what what what part of your journey did you start to realize that this isn't healthy and it's not, you know, I guess the best thing for you and your relationship?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, Amy, a good friend of mine who also coached me for a while says that we change when either our heart's on fire or our ass is on fire. And for me, it definitely took the latter to wake me up. You know, when when things uh, you know, the concept of feather, brick, and truck, right? You know, ideally we'll listen to life giving us the message of the feather. If we don't, we'll get the brick. We don't listen to the brick, here comes the truck. And so for me, the truck was the ending of the relationship. I simply wasn't listening. And uh with that ending, which I thought would never come, I thought it would never happen to me. You know, as a recovering perfectionist, I'm the guy that, you know, the narrative has been, I'm the guy that gets everything right, I'm the guy that, you know, good things always happen to when I make sure that's the case. Well, that's not life. And uh it took the ending of the relationship for me to wake up to let's call it a bit of an ego death. Certain parts of my my ego and what that I'd created beliefs around simply weren't true. And to be able to then look into the depths of how responsible I could be to make the changes in how I live my life, uh, where my triggers are coming from, my emotional landscape, and how all those things are impacting other people. But it certainly took the pain to wake me up to that.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, we we hear this a lot, hey, like, yeah, especially like in our work, we work with couples who are often in that brink, in that like, you know, little vortex of are we going to separate? Are we gonna stay together? And I'm just gonna speak about what we our experience is in this field of work, is it's often the women are like, come on, babe, we really need to do something. And the men's like, no, it's fine, it's really fine. And then they, you know, potentially six months later, they break up and the guy's kind of left wondering how the heck that happened, you know, but yet with they're missing all of the signs before the breakup to like, and I guess like you spoke into, you know, you were just in denial. There was a part of you that didn't see that um this was maybe even potentially a possibility to the end of the relationship. So if you um have a message or something that you'd like to share with the men in that situation before they get to that kind of crucial point where their heart's on fire or their ass is on fire, I like that one, then can you can you share something with them as like a first step? What is something that they could possibly do to, I guess, uh understand the impact of of their uh, I guess, unconscious awareness of what's happening in their life?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, the first thing that's coming to me, and I actually got some some chills thinking about it, which is a really good sign, is around identity. So, you know, what are we truly identifying as? Is it is it the person in a role in a workplace, or is it from a much deeper place of knowing ourselves and as us, but also as a family man, as a father, as a partner, as a member of community? Because I'd throw out there, you know, from my experience and all of the research actually suggests that uh all of those things that I spoke of just now, um, they're the things that lead to more joy in our lives. Um a lack of identifying with all of those beautiful connecting pieces is what leads us down the garden path to to trouble, potentially separation and conflict in all our relationships, let's face it, because how we do one thing is how we do everything. So if we're getting triggered by a partner, we're gonna be getting triggered by similar experiences in terms of how it's making us feel by our kids in the workplace, with with people that we're having conflicts with, which which can happen, right? So I would say, you know, it's it's a deep look into slowing down, would be my first point of advice. Um, taking some space because without space and going from that fight or flight sympathetic state to the rest and digest parasympathetic state, we've simply got nothing. You know, we're coming from our amygdala response rather than our cerebral cortex, and we have a lot less agency in choosing what's really best for us. So, brothers, slow down, take some space, allow your nervous system to calm down, and then have a deep reflection off the back of some joyful activities that you'd love to do around who am I really? What lights me up, what brings me joy? Because at the end of the day, all our children, all our partners really want is the joyful version of us to show up for them. And we've also already won. You know, if you've put a ring on someone's finger where you've got a long-term partner and or you've had kids, you've already won. You know, there's not actually much else that needs to be done other than to ask what lights you up and what brings you joy. Because at the end of the day, that's gonna give us as men a beautiful life, and that's going to give our partners and our kids what they deserve from us as well, irrespective of money and materials. And I'd throw out there as well that if we're doing, if we're living our joy, we're gonna make money because people are attracted to individuals that are living their joy in any occupation. So yeah, I'll I'll probably leave that one there.

SPEAKER_03:

It's amazing. Yeah, I got full body goosebumps when you were sharing a few of those pointers, you know, Andrea. And it's so powerful and it's so true. Just being slowing down, first step, you know, because like you said, we can not recognize or see our pattern or our behavior when we're so busy and just continuing in that culture of hustle. So yeah, I love it.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, everything you shared is bang on. It's the process that I did. I had to slow down, I had to kind of like sit with myself, I had to ask these questions, who am I? while sitting on the beach on my own for months and months to remember because life gets in the way, society comes in, starts telling you who you think you should be. Um, and then all of a sudden, like you said, you're stuck in that rat race and the amygdala's firing like crazy. And um, there's one thing that came up when you shared that is that like some men are petrified of slowing down. Like there's that there could be a fear there that if I slow down, and maybe even if I am not working in my current role, then maybe I'll actually see who I really am and I don't like what I see there. And whether there's shame in there, um, whether there's guilt, um, yeah, it's just a poor view of self, then yeah, there could be a fear underneath there about what you'll see. And I know, I know for me, like what I've learned is that the best version of me turns up when I integrate all those parts, when I actually like accept all of those parts and actually own it. And I wanted to ask you is that has that been an important part of your process of actually accepting some of what you know maybe we would perceive as quote unquote like the dark parts of ourselves? Has that been something that you've had to had to go through?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, very much so. Off the back of you know the ending of that that marriage and diving into a lot more responsibility around what was going on inside of me, I was fortunate to come across, you know, some men's work and men's groups, which really, really helped me. And I can't advocate for that that pathway enough in terms of um seeking support, but also sharing with like-minded men who have been there, and you get that element of shared experience, right? And so for me, I think, yeah, I needed to dive into a lot of what these inaccurate beliefs I had around myself were, and attached to those for me were of course a lot of pain, which existed in my body from different experiences growing up, particularly before the age of seven to nine, right? We take on so much stuff and we take it really personally because we can't attribute uh, I guess, another source of blame other than ourselves at that stage. So for me, it was diving right back into those stages and also the teenage years, uh, around, you know, what had I suppressed? What had I pushed down, as so many of us as men in society and particularly in Western culture do? And what did I truly need to feel again? And for me, Michael, I think what you referred to around um a lot of us as men being stuck in the stress, not wanting to feel, it's because a lot of it's pretty yuck, you know, let's face it. A lot of what we push down, we pushed down because it was yuck. We didn't want to feel it at the time and we just cracked on. Um so for me, it was very much a matter of through lots of different modalities, uh talking to lots of different people, and then learning how to do these processes on my own, you know, using all manner of different um different tools to help me experience my own emotions better. Uh, I was able to to see them and to let a lot go that was holding me back, in addition to being able to experience more joy, because my experience has been as I've sat with and felt the less desirable emotions and had them maybe be freed from my body, along with a lot of visible emotion I experienced at the time, I'm also able to tap into a lot more joy, a lot more happiness. And that's still a work in progress that I'm getting there.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, thank you for sharing that story. And I think what what I was reflecting on during that is is when we're growing up these days, in like, I don't know, for us in our our era and our generation, we didn't have always the best role models. Like we didn't have the best role models of how to express emotion or how I don't know about you, but my dad certainly was one of those ones that just said, stop crying, you know, or children should be seen and not heard. So being able to express ourselves was um something that we didn't learn how to do emotionally. Uh, and I know for like a lot of men that we work with, it's the same. There's a lot of men that, even women, not just men, but there's a lot of men that struggle to identify what's what is this feeling in my body with the the emotion that I'm experiencing. So I think too, there's also like this generational um shift that I see happening more and more, that men are becoming more conscious of their emotions, more aware that actually we need to release them, we need to express them. And I'm just curious to know um, I guess, about your childhood and and was that something true for you as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so what I would say first of all is that my dad always did his best. He always did his best, and I'm a firm believer that actually all of us are doing the best we can with what we know at a given level of consciousness at the time. Um, and that's a hard concept for some people to grasp, but that's that's my belief. And so my dad had had a really rough upbringing himself, and I would say that his dad had an even rougher upbringing uh than that again. So you can see there's that generational piece where certain patterns are being passed on. So what I found with my dad was that he um he worked really hard, he went through a number of different jobs in a lot of pain off the back of you know a car accident uh earlier in his life, which caused a lot of body pain for him. And so what that presented as for him was I guess a lot of big emotions that would come up. He'd have, you know, quite a hair trigger in terms of his anger. Um, the criticism that I would receive, I guess, as a young fella, as an only child who was quite a shy uh empath of a kid, I guess, was quite intense. So for me, I guess what that meant was um not only did I absorb and maybe um take on some of his patterning based upon my brain being a little sponge at the time and literally thinking, well, to be loved, I need to be like him. So my brain's going to therefore form neural pathways like old mate and my mum for that matter to be accepted and to be loved. Uh has that held me in good stead in my marriage? No way. You know, they're not the patterns that I want to take on, but that's where I can make a decision to be a transitional man in my family lineage and show up differently by doing the work, which is what I'm in the process of doing now. It'll be a lifelong effort. So for my for my dad, I think um, yeah, it it was it was really hard. Um and at the same time, he taught me a lot of really incredible things, which is where the integrated piece of thanking him for teaching me how to do things really, really well, how to I guess ingrain that element of perfection in a healthy way, um and to um to figure out how I don't want to be for my kids as well.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, powerful.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, like what I'm hearing there in and seeing in your body language is a lot of compassion and a lot of acceptance and a lot of love. And I I'm I know that it wasn't easy to get there because there's some stuff that no doubt you needed to wade through in order to find the gold that actually exists there. Um, so yeah, just checking in with you there, like was like this kind of work that maybe you've done on yourself, and yeah, just uncovering some of the wounds that are there in childhood. Is this something that you think that that that is a really good idea for everyone to do at some point?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I really do. I I think let's face it, we're all at a different stage in our own journey, and and once again, each individual across a lifetime as well. So um we've got certain members of society who are going to be more secure than others, um, sort of identified areas within myself where the level of security needed some work, and I think that's just uh probably a kind of way of saying insecure is inaccurate beliefs. But I think uh a lot of us, if not all of us, have some insecurity, and based on the insecurities we've got, um, we could very easily say that they're just a carryover from uh events of the past that haven't been truly dealt with. So is the insecurity real? Is the fear real? No. Some people say fear stands for false evidence appearing real. And so that's where I sit with it. So off the back of that to answer your question, Michael, I really think that this work is for everyone. Um if you're a really secure man and you're killing it in all the domains of your life and you're an amazing partner and you're an amazing father, well, our culture's struggling. So, brother, if you don't need the help, be the help, seriously, because we we've got increased rates of domestic family violence, uh, relationship breakdown, uh, mental health issues for obviously for men and women, but I'm talking specifically about men at the moment. And the leading cause of death for men under 44 years of age being suicide. Now that's despite, you know, uh just under 200 million dollars being spent by the government in the last two years alone. At some stage, we need to have this light bulb moment, but our culture is the problem. And no amount of advertising uh is going to band-aid something that needs to have the roots, the root cause addressed. So for that reason, Michael, yeah, I very much think this work is for everyone. And um, the more we can do it, it's actually going to be so beneficial just for our own experience of life and joy that hands down, for that reason it's worth it. And then if we take a selfless approach and an altruistic approach for our families, um everyone benefits, everyone benefits in our families for doing this work. Um, I'm certainly not perfect. I'm not sitting here saying that I don't have uh I don't reach my capacity and um and speak in a way that I'm not proud of and then need to repair with my daughters. That certainly happens. Um however, yeah, it happens a lot less with the work. I'm a lot more aware of what needs to transpire for repair after that.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, well said. Amen, brother. And I love how you've spoken into those who are there and those who are feeling secure in themselves that's like this call up um to help others because there's a lot of a lot of people just sinking and trudging through the mud and not knowing how to get out, like you said. And let's face it, the government has no freaking idea, and they just activate taxpayers' monies in ways that are just not really helpful. So um some things are, but from my experience, what I've seen in the long term, it doesn't really seem like that's the solution. Um, but I wanted to ask you about what happened for you in your story then, because you've had this truck hit you metaphorically, right? So the the relationship breakdown has occurred, you've still got these beautiful young girls, and yeah, like like what happened from there? Because the story doesn't just end there, right? There's still relationships that that are really important to you. Can you expand a bit on on yeah, the story from that point?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. So as I said, my marriage finished about four years ago, and for me, um for the the large majority of that time, um, I wasn't necessarily looking for a relationship. It was actually just me doing a FIFO role, working away week on, week off, coming back, having my kids between 40 and 50 percent of the time, and looking at what had gone on within myself. And initially for me, that came from a point of fixing, and I did try to um I I'd say uh fix myself to get my relationship back for for a time. That's not healthy either, right? Because trying to fix ourselves when actually maybe we're not even broken in the first place, and it needs to come from a place of knowing, well, there's actually just these layers that I'm trying to peel back, which aren't me. There's these layers which were installed when I was a kid from my dad's behaviors. At the heart of it is still me. I've always been there. So what I chose to do was to try to just shop for my kids as best as I could, um, and to be there as a positive, stable and steady masculine role model for them for my two girls. As I say, I've got eight-year-old twin girls now. So it's been a really formative stage of their lives. Um and I know it's been hard as a solo parent for both their mum and their dad. It's been really, really hard. And I would throw out there to to anyone listening that you know, it is incredibly hard. Um, in those cases where it needs to happen and the relationship needs to go in two directions, yeah, a positive co parenting dynamic can be formed, and we can do it in a way that reduces the amount of trauma that the children will experience because of a separated um relationship between their parents. So for me, it's been a big emphasis on. my parenting co-parenting relationship which is which has been largely good. Once again I'm not perfect so it's not always been um not always been perfect either but we do pretty well and doing the work on myself. What's probably come out the other end of that is opening myself up to other relationships and just sort of seeing that um what's really important for me is to be more introspective around what I can offer be more contemplative around what I truly need at a given time in relationship based on the stage of my life that I'm in, what I'm building, how much of myself I'm prepared to give and being really honest and open with a potential partner about that as opposed to coming from a place of stress and just reacting to life as it as as it presents itself to us and diving into something because it looks pretty good on the surface. There needs to be for me a key learning recently is there needs to be a lot more uh introspection and communication around you know who am I where am I at what can I offer and letting the other party know that in in a new relationship so that everyone's on the same page with with certain um understandings around where things are at. So yeah that that's that's a growing piece for me and something that I'm I'm experiencing more as time goes on. But wanting to show up as a a masculine leader in any relationship that I'm in and making sure that the energy my energy is directed fairly to any new partner as opposed to having too much of the past um mixed in with it.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah I think it's um something that a lot of uh co-parenting um people experience is this juggle between energy with new partner energy with the the children and how to balance that but also like I know I've got a friend a girlfriend she's recently just started she's you know got a child and they've separated and she's recently started dating an a new guy and she's like when do I introduce what what time do I introduce like my son to to this new partner you know and it's always that um again this awareness of like gosh what's best here like how do I juggle this and there is so many more moving pieces in a in a split marriage and um a co-parenting situation with a new relationship as well. And I think there's a lot of unconscious um patterns and programs that still people just fall into without the awareness of I guess the impact on the children introducing you know too early and then there's another person and I know you experienced that as a as a child too with um you know your mum meeting new partners. So there's there is so much to consider I guess in the in the new dating world for partners who have um children you know in a co-parenting situation but I don't I don't really have a question there but is there something that's coming to mind when I'm I'm sharing that and I'm sure that maybe you've got um something to relate to with your experience in that world.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah I mean there is definitely something and it's possibly coming from my own mistakes. So I want to be super vulnerable here and not speak to all the things that I've done well but also make it quite clear that there's there's areas that I'm still working on and always will be as as we all will be I guess it's the human journey and that that is very much around taking that space once again from a you know recovering stress addiction where I've been racing around and creating so many moving parts in my life I think if I'm going to do true justice to the other people in my life be it a new partner um to uh my my daughter's mum who I'm so grateful for uh and my daughters and anyone else I need to take space I need to slow down and I guess this is the empathy piece not so much empathy from the place of someone's going through a rough time but just putting myself literally in their shoes to think in with intention how does this situation need to play out to meet my needs and their needs or all of their needs in a way that is kind and timely and most suitable. And I think from my experience I've realized that when I've not had that intention and I've not taken the time to contemplate what's truly needed it hasn't gone as well as I would have liked and I've come out of that with some learnings. So once again we come back to space calm allowing the the thoughts to drop in taking time to contemplate and asking ourselves the right questions. If I don't ask myself the right questions for some reason I don't have a dialogue in my mind my brain thinks in terms of pictures and it goes very quickly to feelings so uh that's very different to other people so I need to consciously ask myself the right questions in order to get the right answers and to take space to allow those epiphanies to drop in.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah and that's that's beautiful man I think the the there's a key part in there that I was just gravitating towards as you're sharing that. And I know maybe it was off record I can't remember when we we we spoke a little bit about people pleasing and how that can kind of yeah really be this covert thing in the background that runs like a program and there's like this compulsiveness to have a look outwards to to to please others and not actually contemplate what I need and speak to that because to me like that's that was my that was my program right I would think that as long as everyone else as long as I can meet everyone else's needs and I'm mostly just you know guessing what those needs are then I'll be loved accepted and have this sense of belonging and so that would mean that I would need to self-abandon compulsively I just wonder like for you has that been a journey for you like contemplating what do I need and then speaking it and not being scared of that very much so yeah I'm so glad you're asking that Michael and uh I've definitely been in the place of pleasing for a lot of my life without realizing it once again it was unconscious.

SPEAKER_00:

My understanding of where that comes from is that you know when we're kids uh you know not having our needs met really hurts so we end up not seeking for our needs to be met. It's not safe to have them met and uh and and in my case then those uh those pleasing tendencies um come out in terms of um you know experiencing feelings of worth and worthiness around other people um so you know I was always called you know the nice guy you know he's such a nice guy he's such a good bloke at the same time you know um what's been the journey for me is to realize you know how to be a really really good man from a place of masculine leadership and truth and empowerment within myself and being of service to other people not pleasing them but being of service to them from a place of I would just really like to help this person out. Um and so that's still a journey that I'm undergoing and it's specifically to your question I think the impulsiveness that you spoke to around how we can sometimes do things without thinking about the repercussions because of the nice guy stuff is very real. And I'm really pleased you added that that in above and beyond the living in a stress response piece because yeah when you when we're constantly doing things just to please one person it's often not going to please another and there might have been a more successful middle ground that with some greater introspection and contemplation I could have met that middle ground and been of service to everybody rather than trying to immediately please one person from a hair trigger point of view.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah big time man and what do you see are the pitfalls with people pleasing in a devoted relationship from your experience like what happens to you yeah yeah I'd say that um you know there's there's that term you know covert contracts that you sort of started to allude to and you know we know Dr.

SPEAKER_00:

Robert Glover the author of No More Mr Nice Guy writes a lot about this yeah for recovering nice guys who are trying to you know rediscover their authenticity and um I think when it's a matter of not speaking one's needs and when I didn't speak my needs and I was trying to meet the needs of others there's almost this unconscious expectation I held that other people would meet mine. And when I may have been overwhelmed and stressed and other people weren't helping me out or seeing what my needs were based on I don't know ESP or or just trying to read my mind then I would get triggered I would get triggered because it would trigger my belief that I wasn't enough I wasn't being seen I wasn't being heard I wasn't worthy these are these inaccurate beliefs to tie back to the earlier in our chat and so I would get triggered and then the behaviors which come from that trigger weren't as I would have liked and weren't fair on the individuals involved. So yeah really important for me to figure out what my needs are which once again comes from taking space introspection contemplation what are my needs what do I need to show up as the best version of myself and then to yeah where it's relevant not from a needy place of expressing needs but just to express my needs from a place of um truth for the success of any relationship I've I've been expressing my needs to my kids a lot more recently uh was sick the other day uh two weekends ago I was sick had the kids I expressed my needs to them you know daddy's feeling not very well I'm gonna sleep a lot you can watch a little bit more TV today I need you to be a really good team and I can't play with you as much as I might normally can we be a really good team today and support Daddy Yeah we can. If I hadn't have said that the day would have been way more stressful but because I could express my needs as just one key example without being in a romantic relationship the day went a lot more smoothly and I got a lot of sleep.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah it's so powerful hey and that I love I keep hearing this this thread that's been weaved all the way through Andrew of like slow down contemplation reflection like it's such an important thing for all of humanity I think this in this um day and age where we just have that opportunity to reflect and and go inward a little bit more as opposed to everything so external that the internal um yeah landscape is much more important to move forward in a healthy direction. Yeah I love that. I am curious because I want to I think we're going to wrap this up does that feel good but yeah I feel like I'd love to uh invite you to because we haven't dived into this but speak into I guess what you're doing now and how you can help men through your experience now because I feel like you've got so much wisdom to offer um but yeah so what is it that um you're doing and how can I guess men find you yeah great so over the last couple of years I've been running men's circles which has been I guess a really good way of giving back in a similar space to where I received so much.

SPEAKER_00:

That's been in a voluntary capacity. In the last sort of six months or so I've decided to um take a back seat from my aviation career and I've been doing quite a lot of training in the men's work space with men's work facilitation mentorships and and other types of training around fatherhood as well. So my passion very much lies in um helping men out particularly fathers to be the very best dads that they they can be and that's going to benefit not only the men themselves but obviously their kids and the generational change is what I'm specifically compassionate uh compassionate about um so what what I'd I'm about to release in the next uh two weeks is a program it's a 12-week program to either be taken up by individuals or more specifically in male-dominated workforces which splices together all of my human performance training and as a human performance instructor as a helicopter pilot um on all these different skills that we can develop to be more solid versions of ourselves in not only the workplace but I'm throwing a completely different spin on it so that I'm adding a part two to every skill set and module which might be things like leadership, teamwork, communication, how we can use those very same skills to be safer in the workplace, more efficient, more engaged in the workplace, take them home and to show up as the most incredible father and partner that we can be. So that's how it's going to really benefit the bottom line from an employer's point of view, the psychosocial health regulations and requirements that an employer will have that specifically for individuals, it's gonna really help them to unearth some greater consciousness around patterns and with the underlying concept that it's skill not will we're all trying our absolute best. Maybe we can skill ourselves up a bit more with a bit more awareness around where our gaps are the last thing I'd love to throw in there apart from that offering that's about to be released is on the Sunshine Coast we've got a one day dad retreat before and after school holidays. The one before is going to set us up for success. A whole load of beautiful workshops some really um nervous system optimizing activities, possibly some family constellation work and then after school holidays we're gonna have uh a recuperation day retreat as well for the dads out there.

SPEAKER_03:

Awesome wow I love that work that you're doing it's such an important work and I think you know that you're the perfect guy to lead that Andrew with the person that you are and your experience in this area as well as your journey and your story too. So yeah I'm sure if anyone's listening they should check you out for sure.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah I think for me it's the it's the authenticity that I get from you and that other men would have really like heard on this podcast and seen that yeah you're not you're not this high performance guy right that's that's like all about no well this is where I want to kind of like hone it down right like not in the sense that we all know it in society high performance. So high performance normally means striving pushing through regardless ignoring um you know like the boundaries that are in the way it's this consciousness approach to it and this openness and this vulnerability that blends with yeah getting the best like optimizing so there's still that optimization I just see that that's a perfect blend man like you're turning up as you are in all your rawness and yeah I think that it's a great role model in a society where we're struggling for role models like we're struggling like you mentioned before so I just want to thank you for um actually putting your ego to the side at one point in your life like and just going you know what like this striving that I'm doing is causing more chaos and for you to slow down drop into your heart what a great example for men for other men that are kind of yeah looking to to get out of the rut that they might find themselves in. So I just wanted to drop that in brother I love your work I love what you're growing into.

SPEAKER_00:

I want to stay connected to that and if anyone else feels the same way check him out where do they find you man yeah so at this point in time um probably best just to look me up on Facebook under my name Andrew Boniface based on the Sunshine Coast more than happy to you know have any discovery calls or meet up for a cup of coffee with with uh anyone who feels called um be it an individual or an employer. And um yeah that's that's probably it for now. I'm still just setting up the back end of the rest of it and I'm more than happy for people to DM me personally that way.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh awesome and we can chuck that in the show notes as well so um if you want to listen to it then. Thanks so much to have to join us today Andrew it's been such a cool conversation.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah yeah super powerful man and um and yeah all the best with the new ventures thank you guys it's been so cool catching up with you thank you for your kind words and if I could just leave one last thought around human performance you know what's the point of being a high performer if we're not living our joy we're burning out and our relationships are failing.

SPEAKER_03:

Powerful thank you brother